Call for Papers

Call for short papers (pdf)

Across organizations, inclusion initiatives claim to level the playing field, yet everyday work practices remain structured by implicit “rules of the game” that privilege the able-bodied, the neurotypical, and the “fit” worker. Such a contrast is represented in the lack of progress in closing disability employment gaps (OECD, 2022). This sub-theme invites scholars to explore how ableism—defined as “a network of beliefs, processes and practices that produces a particular kind of self and body that is projected as the perfect, essential and fully human” (Campbell, 2001, p. 44)—operates as an organizing logic, defining who can play, which moves count as legitimate, and whose embodied dispositions are deemed offside.

Building on Bourdieuan notions of field, habitus, and symbolic violence (Bourdieu, 1989), and on theorization of ableism (Campbell, 2009; Goodley, 2014; Jammaers & Zanoni, 2021), we conceptualize organizations as social arenas in which ableist rules are naturalized and misrecognized as meritocratic fair play (see also Hennekam et al., 2025; Jammaers et al., 2019). Within these arenas, ableist assumptions operate as doxa: taken-for-granted truths about a “proper” worker that remain largely beyond questioning. At the same time, illusio secures disabled employees’ investment in the very game that disadvantages them, as they are encouraged to believe that its stakes are meaningful and worth pursuing. Disabled, chronically ill, and neurodivergent employees are positioned as players out of place, required to invest additional cultural, social, and economic capital merely to stay in the game (e.g., concealing symptoms, performing “fit,” paying more for accessible transportation). In neoliberal-ableist societies, paid employment is often constructed as the ultimate goal, and not playing along is becoming increasingly unacceptable (Baeken et al., 2025).

At the same time, actors contest, subvert, or rewrite these ableist rules through embodied resistance, counternarratives, crip aesthetics, or collective organizing. Such counter-play opens up possibilities for imagining more caring, interdependent, and plural modes of organizing—what might be referred to as crip play (Jammaers & Ybema, 2023; McRuer, 2006). Counter-play may also disrupt the dominant assumption that paid work constitutes the only legitimate game through which disabled people can achieve full citizenship. This assumption reflects a broader societal trend in which inclusion is increasingly tethered to participation in the labor market (Baeken et al., 2025). By challenging this logic, counter-play may open space for alternative forms of belonging that do not hinge on wage labor as the sole marker of worth.

This sub-theme will be organized in a hybrid format to ensure an accessible conference format. Drawing inspiration from the Colloquium theme “The Games We Play,” we will organize a series of hybrid games between paper presentations.

We invite conceptual, empirical, and methodological contributions that relate to (but are not limited to) the following topics:

Topic 1—Work as a Selective Game with Selective Rules

This topic examines how contemporary workplaces operate like competitive games in which only certain bodies and minds are structurally advantaged. It focuses on the implicit norms, expectations, and institutional designs that make work more “winnable” for some groups than for others.

• How do organizational games reproduce ableism and normalize the able body/mind as the ideal?

• How is the feel for the game cultivated through practices of HRM, leadership, and performance systems privileging speed, resilience, and perpetual productivity?

• How do scripts (e.g., career scripts) reinforce the ableist game, and what alternative scripts could enable more inclusive career trajectories for disabled workers?

• Which diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in the workplace sustain the ableist game rather than disrupt it?

Topic 2 – Pawns in the Game

This topic addresses how different actors play different roles in the game, from pawns to knights or queens. It focuses on who is allowed to play certain roles and how different individuals or groups—in the workplace and in society—can either support or hinder disabled people’s inclusion in the workplace.

• What is the role of policymakers, job coaches, managers, and colleagues in creating and sustaining this ableist employment game (Baeken et al., 2025)?

• Which allies can help disabled workers, and through what tactics (like inclusive leadership, see, for instance, Zhu et al., 2025)?

• What could an intersectional perspective teach us about inclusion?

Topic 3—Cheating the Game and Disruptive Crip Tactics

This topic explores how disabled workers actively subvert, reconfigure, or “crip” the existing rules of the work game. It highlights the creative, strategic, and resistance-based practices through which they gain access, agency, and space for self-determination.

• How do disabled professionals navigate, hack, or re-script these games—through tactics of masking, disidentification, or creative play?

• How can work be a game that disabled and neurodivergent people play exceptionally well thanks to their unique perspectives (see Dwertmann et al., 2025; Mauksch & Dey, 2023)?

• How do technological evolutions create opportunities for people with disabilities to disrupt the game and level the playing field (e.g., AI tools for people with dyslexia)?

• How do crip aesthetics or collective organizing provide fertile alternatives for the dominant idea of paid employment as the gateway to inclusion?

Topic 4—Rewriting the Rules of the Game

This topic analyses how organizational and institutional rules can be redesigned to ensure that a wider diversity of players can thrive. It focuses on structural change, inclusive design, and alternative principles for organizing work so that participation and success are not limited to a narrow set of bodies and minds.

• How can neoliberal and technological transformations (e.g., AI, gamified metrics, digital monitoring, hybrid work) dampen the ableist game mechanics of contemporary work (e.g., Hossain et al., 2025; Jammaers et al., 2025; Walkowiak, 2024)?

• What happens when the rules are suspended, e.g., in self-employment, social enterprises (Mauksch & Dey, 2023), cooperatives, or activist collectives (Buchter, 2025) experimenting with alternative forms of inclusion and interdependence?

• How do disability scholars themselves participate in the academic ableism game (see Brown & Leigh, 2018), and how might research practices enact more inclusive, emancipatory, accessible, and caring forms of knowledge production?

• How do global shocks (negative ones such as wars or climate change or positive ones such as the AI revolution) change the rules and create opportunities for real change?

• What alternative models of citizenship could decouple social inclusion of people with disabilities from wage labor?

By theorizing ableism as a game, this sub-theme aims to advance organization studies’ understanding of inequality, embodiment, and the politics of participation, while resonating with the EGOS Colloquium invitation to rewrite the rules of organization.

• Baeken, A., Forrier, A., & De Cuyper, N. (2025). Is work still a right if it has become a norm? Disability inclusion in labor market policy discourse. Journal of Business Ethics, 201, 839–857. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-025-05962-6
• Bourdieu, P. (1989). Social space and symbolic power. Sociological Theory, 7(1), 14–25. https://doi.org/10.2307/202060
• Brown, N., & Leigh, J. (2018). Ableism in academia: Where are the disabled and ill academics? Disability & Society, 33(6), 985–989. https://doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2018.1455627
• Buchter, L. (2025). “We are our own best advocates”: When disability rights activists constructed legal compliance to address ableism in France. Journal of Business Ethics, 201, 915–940. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-025-05959-1
• Campbell, F. K. (2001). “Disability’s” date with ontology and the ableist body of the law. Griffith Law Review, 10(1), 42–62.
• Campbell, F. K. (2009). Contours of ableism: The production of disability and abledness. Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230245181
• Dwertmann, D. J. G., Boehm, S. A., McAlpine, K. L., & Kulkarni, M. (2025). Organizational burden or catalyst for ideas? Disability as a driver of cognitive flexibility and creativity. Administrative Science Quarterly. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1177/00018392251326110
• Goodley, D. (2014). Dis/ability studies: Theorising disablism and ableism. Routledge.
• Hennekam, S., Richard, S., & Özbilgin, M. (2023). How social structures influence the labour market participation of individuals with mental illness: A Bourdieusian perspective. Journal of Management Studies, 60(1), 174–203. https://doi.org/10.1111/joms.12851
• Hossain, S., Nasir, K., Carolli, A., Gignac, M. A. M., Van Eerd, D., & Jetha, A. (2025). Strategies for supporting disability-inclusive employment in the future of work. Journal of Occupational Rehabilitation. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10926-025-10339-7
• Jammaers, E., De Coster, M., Klinksiek, I., & Van Amsterdam, N. (2025). Compassion, remote work and vulnerability: The case of employees with disabilities during the COVID-19 pandemic. Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal. https://doi.org/10.1108/EDI-10-2024-0500
• Jammaers, E., Zanoni, P., & Williams, J. (2021). Not all fish are equal: A Bourdieuan analysis of ableism in a financial services company. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 32(11), 2519–2544. https://doi.org/10.1080/09585192.2019.1588348
• Jammaers, E., & Ybema, S. (2023). Oddity as commodity? The body as symbolic resource for other-defying identity work. Organization Studies, 44(5), 785–805. https://doi.org/10.1177/01708406221077770
• Jammaers, E., & Zanoni, P. (2021). The identity regulation of disabled employees: Unveiling the ‘varieties of ableism’ in employers’ socio-ideological control. Organization Studies, 42(3), 429–452. https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840619900292
• Mauksch, S., & Dey, P. (2023). Treating disability as an asset (not a limitation): A critical examination of disability inclusion through social entrepreneurship. Organization. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1177/13505084221150586
• McRuer, R. (2006). Crip theory: Cultural signs of queerness and disability. New York University Press.
• OECD. (2022). Disability, work and inclusion: Mainstreaming in all policies and practices. https://doi.org/10.1787/1eaa5e9c-en
• Walkowiak, E. (2024). Digitalization and inclusiveness of HRM practices: The example of neurodiversity initiatives. Human Resource Management Journal, 34, 578–598. https://doi.org/10.1111/1748-8583.12499
• Zhu, X., Jiang, F., Volpone, S. D., Baldridge, D. C., & Li, R. (2025). The role of inclusive leadership in reducing disability accommodation request withholding. Journal of Management. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1177/01492063251314453