Business Ethics and Equity/Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Through an Ability Studies and Disability Studies Lens
摘要
Disabled people are impacted by how businesses act as potential employers and producers of products. Equity/equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) discussions with the goal to make the workplace better for marginalized groups including disabled people take place under at least 19 EDI phrases (realizing that the discussions of only one of the terms is not enough) and six EDI policy frameworks such as Athena Swan. Ability expectations are exhibited by businesses in many different areas ranging from who they hire to their business goals and plans, and ability expectations of businesses are exhibited by consumers, government, and others. Ability expectations are a general cultural reality impacting disabled people and society at large. Scientific and technological advancements shape ability expectations, which in turn impact disabled people and influence the business landscape. Well-being with all its composite measures, such as the Canadian Index of well-being and their indicators are about the ability of disabled people and society at large to have a good life. Business are one factor influencing the good life. Rights-based occupational concepts such as occupational justice are employed to improve the social problems people including disabled people face in being occupied. Ethics is about what one ought to do. Therefore, the aim of this study was to map out to what extent the academic literature focusing on business ethics is linked to the academic literature engaging with disabled people, 35 ability studies-based concepts, 19 EDI phrases and 6 EDI policy frameworks, well-being composite measures, science and technology governance phrases, and rights-based occupational concepts. To fulfill this aim, I performed a review of academic English language articles using a hit count manifest coding approach employing SCOPUS, the 70 databases of EBSCO-HOST and Web of Science. I found that articles from journals with business ethics in the title or abstracts containing the term “business ethics” did rarely or not at all contain keywords in their abstracts or full text that covered disabled people, ability studies-based concepts, EDI phrases and policy frameworks, science and technology governance phrases, well-being composite measures, or occupational concepts. The findings highlight significant gaps in the literature covered impacting the mandate of business ethics. The findings are discussed through the lens of the academic fields of disability studies and ability studies.