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Recently, organizations have been redesigning their work environments in response to the rise in teleworking and the ever-growing demands to reduce costs while increasing productivity and efficiency (Hoendervanger et al., 2018; Kingma, 2019; Sivunen & Putnam, 2020). The new work environment follows the concept of Acivity-Based Working (ABW) and represents a shift from working in a cubicle from 9 to 5 to offering alternative office spaces and allowing greater flexibility in how and when people work (Kingma, 2019). Under the ABW regime, employees are expected tocan organize their own schedules, choose whether they work at home or in the office, and, when working in the office, they can choose where in the office they will work depending on the tasks they have to accomplish (e.g. open space zones with hotdesking, soundproof pods, etc.). So far, prior studies have identified several issues with the implementation of ABW, such as decreased quality of workplace relationships (Haapakangas et al., 2019; Morrison & Macky, 2017; Wohlers & Hertel, 2018) and feelings of de-humanization (Taskin et al., 2019). Yet, it is not so clear how ABW affects diversity and inclusion in organizations, especially the inclusion of people with disabilities. One of the implications of ABW is the changes in the visibility of workers (Wohlers & Hertel, 2018). Visibility refers to the extent to which individuals are “fully regarded and recognized by others” (Buchanan & Settles, 2019, p. 1) and has consequences for inclusion, information exchange, and career advancement (Leonardi & Treem, 2020; McDonald et al., 2008; Sewell & Taskin, 2015). The issue of (in)visibility becomes even more relevant when it comes to disability in the workplace. When their impairments can be kept invisible, employees with (visible?) disabilities are confronted with disclosure dilemmas, facing a trade-off between the downsides (e.g. becoming stigmatized, Calder-Dawe et al., 2020; Follmer et al., 2020; Ragins, 2008) and the upsides (e.g. receiving accommodations, Hastuti & Timming, 2021) of informing others on their condition. Prior research has illustrated the role of the environment and other stakeholders in this influencing one’s decisions of making oneself visible process of making oneself visible as a person with a disability (e.g. supportive supervisor relationship or disability friendly workplace, von Schrader et al., 2010; legislative context of quota, Richard & Hennekam, 2020). To dateHowever, we however still know little about the role office types play in the process of the process of being made visible asmaking peoplerson with a disabilities visibley. In this study, we aim to understand (1) how ABW (in)visibilizes disability in organizations and (2) how this (in)visibilization affects the experience of disability in ABW. To answer these research questions, we conducted a multiple-case study through 25 in-depth interviews collected from five private organizations, ranging from 200 to 20 000 employees, in different stages of the implementation of ABW, from having initiated the change in a few departments only to company-wide transformations. For each organization, we interviewed the D&I responsible, the ABW-project manager, an employee with a disability, and lastly a colleague and a supervisor of an employee with a disability.
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David Klinksiek, I., Jammaers, E., & Taskin, L. (2023). (In)visibilizing Disability in Activity-Based Working. Academy of Management Annual Meeting, Boston. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/269203