Career success of disabled high-flyers
Year: 2005
Type: other
Abstract: The aim of this qualitative study is to identify what factors a group of professional\ndisabled people perceived had influenced their career success, and how they define\ncareer success. The study is based on subjective accounts of thirty-one disabled highflyers:\nmen and women from different social and ethnic backgrounds, with congenital\nor acquired physical impairments, and hold occupational positions in Social Class I or\nH of the Registrar General's classification of occupations.\nThis work looks at the extent to which the disabled high-flyers perceived career\nchoice and progression, childhood, education, disability, and personality to be\nsignificant to their career development and success, and how they define success.\nUsing the data collected from semi-structured interviews, this research provides an indepth\ninsight of the journey travelled, by each of the thirty-one disabled people, from\nchildhood to achieving career success in adulthood.\nThe study shows that oldstyle careers, operating in stable and supportive organisations\nare sometimes more beneficial to disabled people than some forms of new careers\nknown as `boundaryless' and which require more flexibility and moving from place to\nplace. It indicates the existence of the `glass ceiling' in many sectors of the economic\nmarket, showing it to cause disabled people to redirect their original career choice.\nThe study also shows that individuals with congenital disabilities were often likely to\nfollow more of a boundaryless approach of career progression in order to meet their\ninitial career aspirations. It also found that, disability was not only sometimes a causal\nattribute of re-directed career progression, but also, at times, a precursor of career\nchoice and success. However being disabled was not always the cause of career\nchange and re-direction. Several of the disabled people perceived their career to have\ndeveloped much the same as that of their non-disabled colleagues.\nThis thesis recognises the role of education in the career and life success of the\ndisabled high-flyers. The advantages and disadvantages of mainstream and segregated\neducation are highlighted. Although segregated education does indeed restrict the\neducational and therefore, occupational choices of young disabled people, it is\nnonetheless considered to be essential to the social, physical and psychological\ndevelopment of disabled children. This work offers the idea of link schools and partial\nintegration to facilitate disabled students to achieve life goals at the rate of their nondisabled\npeers.\nThe career orientation of the female disabled high-flyers, particularly those with\nchildhood disability, was unlikely to be influenced by their gender. It seems that\ndisability was the master status, overriding all other attributes, including gender.\nHowever this was not a negative thing. It was found that disabled women are not only\ncapable of achieving a status equal to non-disabled women in the home, but also have\nthe potential to compete with non-disabled men in the workplace and succeed in\ngender atypical careers.
Author: Sonali Laxmi Shah
Language: English
Subfield: Education
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1510953686