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Employees with disability-related communication impairment often experience isolation from professional connections that can negatively affect their careers. Management research suggests that having lower quality leader relationships can be an obstacle to the development of professional connections for employees with disabilities. However, in this paper we suggest that lower quality leader–member exchange (LMX) relationships may not be a uniform hurdle for the professional isolation of employees with disability-related communication impairment. Drawing on psychological disengagement theory, we predict that employees with more severe, rather than less severe, communication impairment develop resilience to challenges in lower quality LMX relationships by psychologically disengaging from professional connections and, in turn, bear fewer negative consequences of professional isolation on career outcomes. In two studies of deaf and hard of hearing employees, we find that in lower quality LMX relationships employees with more severe communication impairment perceive being less isolated than employees with less severe communication impairment, and, in turn, report better career outcomes. Overall, our findings suggest that employees with more severe communication impairment may develop effective coping strategies to manage challenges of perceived professional isolation for career outcomes when in lower quality LMX relationships.

One of the ""grand challenges"" of our time confronting societies around the world is the transition and integration of stigmatized individuals into formal employment in organizations. While studie...

Employees with disability-related communication impairments can experience isolation from professional connections which can negatively affect their careers. Management research suggests that havin...

Isolation from professional connections can negatively impact how employees with disabilities feel about their careers, and research suggests that poorer quality employee-supervisor relationships c...

This symposium highlights how identity threat is experienced by members of dominant groups and how this impacts the ability of minorities to gain access and advancement within organizations. The pa...

This symposium showcases research projects examining novel ideas about the intersections of different marginalized and dominant social identities and how they interact with each other to impact an ...

Social comparisons are ubiquitous, providing information about which goals or outcomes are valued; the performance or behavior required to achieve these; and relative status based on goal and outco...