Neurodivergent Workers in the UK: Exposing the Contradictions of Reasonable Accommodations through the lens of Organisational Justice

Rocha, Raysa; Nash, Louise; Saxena, Siddhartha

Abstract

This study examines neurodivergent workers’ lived experiences through the lens of organisational justice, drawing on 37 in-depth interviews conducted in the United Kingdom. Using reflexive thematic analysis, we show that perceptions of fairness arise not solely from formal managerial actions but through everyday interactions across the workplace. Neurotypical coworkers emerge as influential ‘justice agents’ whose routine behaviours constitutively shape neurodivergent employees’ sense of fairness, often to a degree comparable with formal organisational authorities. This finding reconceptualises organisational justice as a process relationally constituted horizontally among employees, rather than delivered exclusively through hierarchical structures. Our analysis also identifies a central tension in neurodivergent workers’ pursuit of authenticity. While authenticity is critical to well-being, efforts to express cognitive differences frequently trigger marginalisation within organisational environments structured around neurotypical norms. In addition, we demonstrate how the UK reasonable accommodation framework can generate exclusionary dynamics; it requires neurodivergent employees to request and justify adjustments through processes that may be undermined by the characteristics of their neurodivergence. These insights reconfigure Organisational Justice Theory by highlighting additional relational dimensions of fairness and shift neurodiversity scholarship in HRM beyond recruitment-focused discussions toward the interpersonal and structural conditions that shape workplace experiences.

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Human Resource Management

Keywords

Strategic HRM;Organizational behaviour and psychological state;Diversity and equality;Talent management

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Neurodivergent Workers in the UK: Exposing the Contradictions of Reasonable Accommodations through the lens of Organisational Justice

Abstract

Please choose your submission type

Primary Track

Keywords