Chapter 14 Homework Reemphasize The Generally Low Education Levels Most

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Chapter 14: Physical and Mental Ability

Chapter 14

Physical and Mental Ability

Table of Contents

Page No. in the IM

Chapter Outline

Chapter Objectives

Lecture Notes and Teaching Suggestions

Key Facts (and Associated Questions)

Selected Items for Instructors’

Consideration as Discussion Points

Questions to Consider (End of Chapter)

Actions and Exercises

Suggested Test Questions

Chapter Outline

1. Introduction and Overview

2. History

4. Population, Education, and Employment

6. Customers with Disabilities

8. Recommendations for Organizations

10. Key Terms

12. Actions and Exercises

Chapter Objectives

After completing this chapter, readers should have an understanding of physical and

mental disability as aspects of diversity. Specifically, they should be able to:

• discuss the proportion of people who have disabilities in the United States and the

implications for diversity in organizations.

Chapter 14: Physical and Mental Ability

• explain the purposes and provisions of legislation related to employment of people

with disabilities.

• discuss earnings and employment experiences of people with disabilities.

Lecture Notes and Teaching Suggestions

This chapter introduces students to physical and mental ability as aspects of diversity. It

includes the following: a brief history of people with disabilities in the United States, the

population of people with disabilities and the different types of disabilities, relevant

legislation and selected EEOC cases, research on the experiences of people with

disabilities at work, and recommendations. Because people with disabilities comprise

nearly 20% of the population and the population is aging (with age, the likelihood of

acquiring a disability increases), addressing disability as a diversity issue is increasingly

important.

A key issue for students to grasp is the many misperceptions of the competencies of

people with disabilities. An impairment of a certain portion of a person’s body or brain

does not mean the other portions of the person’s body or brain are also impaired. A

Fears about excessive absence and turnover of people with disabilities are largely

unfounded. People with disabilities have absence and turnover rates that are comparable

to the absence and turnover rates of people without disabilities, sometimes better.

Students may express concern about the costs of benefits for small employers, and may

Chapter 14: Physical and Mental Ability

justifiable under the ADA. Organizations providing medical benefits do so at lower rates

that emphasize sharing risks over larger numbers of people (even if they are working at a

Key Facts (and Associated Questions)

Questions following each “Key Fact” are helpful in stimulating class discussion.

(Selected key facts include discussion points in this Instructors’ Manual. Instructors may

choose different questions to emphasize a particular key fact depending on the

needs/interests of both the students and instructors). Instructors may wish to have

students formulate questions of their own which are relevant to the key facts and use

them for class discussion.

• Nearly one in five Americans—about 57 million people—have a disability.

Question: Did you know that about 20% of Americans have a disability?

Many people associate “disability” with using a wheelchair or other visible

• Many disabilities are invisible.

Question: How do invisible disabilities affect employment outcomes?

As discussed in Chapter 2, visibility or identifiability of a person’s differences

• Although people with disabilities want to work, they are more likely to be

Chapter 14: Physical and Mental Ability

unemployed or have lower earnings than people without disabilities.

Question: What could be the cause of unemployment and lower earnings as seen

among people with disabilities?

• People with disabilities have similar rates of absence and levels of performance as

people without disabilities.

Question: Why are people with disabilities believed to be more likely to be absent

and to have lower performance than people without disabilities?

Stereotypes, ignorance, and possible experiences with one individual who was or is

• Most workers with disabilities require no special accommodations.

Question: Why are perceptions that accommodations are expensive so prevalent?

• Accommodations for people with disabilities are often the same as

accommodations for people without disabilities.

Question: How can organizations make sure that they make reasonable

accommodations for people with disabilities?

Selected Items for Instructors’ Consideration as Discussion

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Points

1. Featured Case 14.1: A Staffing Company and Its Client Refuse to Hire an

Experienced Deaf Applicant

This feature provides an example of how discrimination by a staffing company and an

employer combine to work against an employee with a disability. The reason staffing

Questions to Consider:

1. What type of working conditions likely exist in a meat processing plant? What

skills do workers there likely possess?

A meat packaging plant may be noisy and the employees possibly require ear plugs.

2. What kinds of recruitment, selection, and retention costs could Dakota Pork be

experiencing that are associated with refusing to hire experienced applicants who

desired to work at the company?

Costs could be quite high if people with qualifications are turned down. Retention

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As Cox and Blake state in Chapter 1, costs of an organization doing a poor job of

integrating workers from diverse backgrounds can be extremely high. Considering

3. Since Dakota Pork hired the complaining party’s brother less than one hour after

telling the complaining party there were no jobs available, it is possible that the

company was unaware of the ADA. How likely is this? How likely is it that

Mitchell Temporary was unaware of the ADA? Aside from overt discrimination on

the basis of the complaining party’s disability, why else might the complaining

party have been told that there were no jobs available?

It is possible that they were unaware of the ADA, but it is also possible they

thought they could get away with treating the complaining party unfairly. Mitchell

2. Feature 14.1: Examples of Reasonable Accommodations and Estimated Costs

This feature provides hypothetical situations for which required accommodations,

estimated costs of providing those accommodations, and other benefits that result from

3. Table 14.2: Employment Status of the Civilian Noninstitutional Population by

Disability Status and Selected Characteristics, 2013 Annual Averages and Table

14.3: Education of People ages 21–64 with a disability and without a disability, 2012

Table 14.2 depicts the negative effects of having a disability on people’s propensity to

participate in the workforce. Previous chapters have discussed the lower likelihood that

4. Organizational Feature 14.1: Applicants and Employees with Disabilities and

Employment at Walmart: Persistent Problems, Expensive Settlements, and Negative

Publicity

This feature presents a chronology of problems at Walmart related to applicants and

employees with disabilities drawn from the EEOC Web site. Because Walmart is such a

Questions to Consider:

1. Walmart is the largest retailer in the United States. What role may its size have

played in

a. Walmart’s persistent issues with disability discrimination, and

b. the EEOC’s persistence in litigating these cases?

2. Walmart agreed to provide priority consideration for hiring applicants who were

qualified to work at Walmart but had been rejected based on illegal information

obtained through its employment questionnaire.

a. What are the likely qualifications required for most jobs in Walmart stores?

b. How might being open to hiring people with disabilities benefit organizations

with similar jobs?

If recruiting criteria focus on the factors that affect the work, then it is

possible to hire good candidates. Elimination of negative biases would result

3. What might other firms learn from Walmart’s experiences regarding application

forms, selection decisions, accommodations, management training, and other

human resource management issues discussed in this sidebar? Have you seen

inappropriate questions on employment applications?

Questions to Consider (End of Chapter)

1. What are reasonable accommodations? How does a company determine what is

“reasonable” and what is not?

Chapter 14: Physical and Mental Ability

Reasonable accommodations are changes that can be implemented to enable a

2. What similarities exist between perceptions about the competence and performance

of workers with disabilities and older workers?

3. In the $561,000 DuPont disability discrimination judgment, even if Ms. Barrios had

been unable to walk, what steps could have been taken to assist her if the need to

evacuate the building arose? Speculate on reasons this case was not resolved before

Ms. Barrios was terminated or after she filed her discrimination charge with the

EEOC but before the jury trial.

If Ms. Barrios had been unable to walk, she would probably have had a wheelchair

or walker to help her evacuate. In the event of a hurried evacuation, the wheelchair

4. How can recommendations for employment equity for people with disabilities be

helpful in ensuring equity for other non-dominant group members?

Actions and Exercises

1. Observe people with visible disabilities in your community in one particular place

(such as a university, store, restaurant, office, or television commercial). Are you

able to observe many people with visible disabilities? Is the proportion of people

you observed close to the 20% of the population who have a disability? What does

this exercise indicate about invisible disabilities?

2. Conduct library or Internet research on the positive effects of work on people’s

health and well-being. Discuss the applicability of employment to the health and

well-being of people with disabilities.

Students’ answers will vary. The discussion could be based on how employment of

3. This chapter included examples of cases in which a person with a disability was

clearly qualified to work, and many of the companies involved are those that should

have had knowledge of the ADA. Choose one of these industries and investigate

annual turnover and costs of turnover. Speculate on the cost and productivity

benefits that might be realized if people with disabilities were sought out as

applicants and employees.

Students’ answers will vary.

4. Investigate resources in your community that facilitate employment of people with

disabilities.

Chapter 14: Physical and Mental Ability