Supervisory Support Shift: The Impact of Disability Inclusion on Coworker Productivity

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Bird, Yanhua; Li, Qi; Zhou, Xiaoyu
• 署名单位: Boston University; The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen; ShanghaiTech University
• 刊物名称: ORGANIZATION SCIENCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1047-7039
• DOI: 10.1287/orsc.2024.19036
• 发表日期: 2026
• 关键词: CORPORATE SOCIAL PERFORMANCE; benevolent sexism; SUBORDINATE DISABILITY; PREFERENTIAL SELECTION; sensitive questions; diversity; WORKPLACE; HOSTILE; employees; JUSTICE

摘要

A growing number of organizations hire employees with visible physical disabilities into jobs where they can perform as effectively as their nondisabled counterparts. Many practitioners expect such inclusion to positively impact nondisabled coworkers. Yet, the consequences for nondisabled coworkers' productivity remain unclear. We focus on an underexplored mechanism: frontline managers' discretionary allocation of supervisory support. Drawing on research on benevolent ableism and finite managerial capacity, we theorize that adding an employee with a visible physical disability-even one fully capable of performing the task-can shift supervisory support toward the disabled employee, reducing the support available to nondisabled coworkers. We test this theory using a natural experiment in a teleservice company that randomly assigned recruits, including individuals with visible physical disabilities, to project teams. We analyze 40,334 employee-month productivity bonus records, a standardized, nondiscretionary measure consolidating multiple performance indicators and net of supervisor evaluations. Supplemented with interviews with 15 frontline managers and 28 subordinate agents, our analyses show that managers allocated more supervisory support to disabled employees and that this reallocation dampened nondisabled coworkers' productivity. Our study advances understanding of how disability inclusion shapes supervisory support patterns and its implications for coworker performance.