A Critical Scoping Review of Disability Employment Research in the Construction Industry: Driving Social Innovation through More Inclusive Pathways to Employment Opportunity

Abstract

Innovation research in construction has almost exclusively focused on economic and technological innovation. In contrast, the emerging concept of social innovation has been largely ignored. This is despite the global growth of social procurement policies which incentivize construction firms to innovate in providing employment opportunities for equity-seeking groups. While there is an emerging body of research which is starting to explore innovative employment pathways into construction for certain equity-seeking groups such as women, refugees and Indigenous people, there has been relatively little research into employment pathways for people with a disability. Addressing this gap in research, this paper reports the results of a critical scoping review of Web of Science, Scopus, PubMed and Google Scholar publications on the employment of people with disability in construction. Using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews (PRISMA-ScR) approach, extant research was mapped across seven themes of hiring disability practices. Results indicate that research into the employment of people with disability in construction internationally remains nascent with significant knowledge gaps compared to mainstream disability employment research. These key gaps include: barriers to employment based on the lived experiences of people with disability seeking employment in construction; the facilitation of cross-sector relationships with organizations that support people with disability into employment; the reduction of biases, ingrained stigmas and inequalities in recruitment practices for people with disability; and the role of informal norms and practices in undermining formal laws, regulations and policies designed to reduce barriers to employment. The scoping review also identifies a methodological gap in the research reviewed by highlighting the need for more construction research designs to include people with disability as prioritized research participants as well as research investigators and to adopt phenomenological and interpretive approaches which respect the lived experiences of people with a disability seeking work in the construction industry.