TITLE:
Employing Differently Abled Shop-Floor Employees in Confectionery Industry in Sri Lanka: An Ethnographic Narrative
AUTHORS:
Anuruddika Jayathilaka
KEYWORDS:
Employment, Differently-Abled, Confectionery Industry
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Business and Management,
Vol.8 No.6,
November
16,
2020
ABSTRACT: In the contemporary workplace, discrimination is avoided while diversity is promoted. Up to recent, past gender, race, and age
were the topics taken into discussion. But recently a growing attention is
visible in the corporate sector for providing employment opportunities for the
differently-abled candidates to give equal opportunities to them as well. It is
even against the law to discriminate against anyone in the workplace, because they have, or are
assumed to have, a disability. Hence, it is essential to investigate on how the
differently-abled employees are managed in the complex, turbulent corporate
environment. In this research, in a journey of ethnographic narrative, I set out to narrate the stories of
the differently-abled shop-floor employees in the confectionery industry, as their
stories are within the context of Sri Lanka. As a good organizational
ethnography can reveal and explore the intricacies, challenges, tensions, and
choices of life in organizations, I employ organizational ethnography as the prime methodological approach
of this study. Exploring and analyzing the daily lives of differently-abled
shop-floor employees— while being part of their work life—paved the path to
realize that employees with disabilities are capable of being an “employee” which the society expects.
Finally, it could be concluded that unlike in managing the people without
disabilities, it should be more towards sensitivity, which was observed and
experienced throughout
the research study.