Telwatte Apsara, Anglim Jeromy, Wynton Sarah K A, Moulding Richard
School of Psychology, Deakin University.
Rehabil Psychol. 2017 Feb;62(1):7-19. doi: 10.1037/rep0000120. Epub 2017 Jan 2.
Existing research suggests that the decision to grant or deny workplace accommodations for people with disabilities is influenced by a range of legal and nonlegal factors. However, less is known about how these factors operate at the within-person level. Thus, we proposed and tested a multilevel model of the accommodation decision-making process, which we applied to better understand why people with psychological disabilities often experience greater challenges in obtaining accommodations.
A sample of 159 Australian adults, composed mostly of managers and HR professionals, read 12 vignettes involving requests for accommodations from existing employees. The requests differed in whether they were for psychological or physical disabilities. For each vignette, participants rated their empathy with the employee, the legitimacy of the employee's disability, the necessity for productivity, the perceived cost, and the reasonableness, and indicated whether they would grant the accommodation.
Multilevel modeling indicated that greater empathy, legitimacy, and necessity, and lower perceived cost predicted perceptions of greater reasonableness and greater granting. Accommodation requests from employees with psychological disabilities were seen as less reasonable and were less likely to be granted; much of this effect seemed to be driven by perceptions that such accommodations were less necessary for productivity. Ratings on accommodations were influenced both by general between-person tendencies and within-person appraisals of particular scenarios.
The study points to a need for organizations to more clearly establish guidelines for how decision-makers should fairly evaluate accommodation requests for employees with psychological disabilities and disability more broadly. (PsycINFO Database Record
现有研究表明，决定是否给予残疾员工工作场所便利受一系列法律和非法律因素影响。然而，对于这些因素在个体层面如何起作用，我们知之甚少。因此，我们提出并测试了一个关于便利决策过程的多层次模型，并将其应用于更好地理解为何患有心理疾病的员工在获得便利方面往往面临更大挑战。
159名澳大利亚成年人组成的样本，大多为经理和人力资源专业人员，阅读了12个涉及现有员工申请便利的 vignette。这些申请在是针对心理残疾还是身体残疾方面存在差异。对于每个 vignette，参与者对他们对员工的同理心、员工残疾的合法性、提高生产力的必要性、感知成本和合理性进行评分，并表明他们是否会批准该便利申请。
多层次建模表明，更高的同理心、合法性和必要性，以及更低的感知成本预示着更高的合理性认知和更高的批准可能性。来自患有心理疾病员工的便利申请被认为不太合理，且获批可能性较小；这种影响在很大程度上似乎是由这样一种认知驱动的，即此类便利对提高生产力的必要性较低。对便利申请的评分既受个体间总体倾向的影响，也受对特定情景的个体内评估的影响。
该研究指出，组织需要更明确地制定指导方针，说明决策者应如何公平地评估患有心理疾病员工以及更广泛意义上残疾员工的便利申请。（PsycINFO数据库记录
