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

Abstract

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. Funding: X. Zhou gratefully acknowledges financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grant 72102145] and Shanghai Oriental Talents Program. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2024.19036 .