Work-life interface from the perspective of disabled employees: A grounded theory by situational analysis approach

Despite the increase in quantity and quality of research in the work-life interface area in recent years, disabled employees who in some cases have jobs that are similar to physically healthy employees, have been ignored. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to understand the construct of work-life interface from the perspective of disabled employees. The research is based on interpretivism paradigm and inductive approach; it is basic in terms of purpose and qualitative research in terms of data. In-depth episodic interviews were conducted with 14 disabled employees working in government organizations or private companies in Tehran. Clark situational analysis was used to analyze the data as one of the approaches of grounded theory. The sampling method was theoretical and the number of samples was determined based on the theoretical saturation of the categories. To confirm the trustworthiness of the analyzes, three methods of collaboration, space triangulation and reflexivity were used. Data analyzes were performed in five steps by drawing four messy and ordered situational maps, social worlds and arenas maps, and finally positional maps. The results showed that work-life interface from the perspective of disabled employees is affected by 25 categories in the form of six components of individual actions, collective actions, perceptual components, discourse structures, socio-cultural components and structural-organizational components. Body limitations, similarity and synchronicity of collective experiences, pattern-ability and patterning, Inducing the idea of vulnerability, distorting the concept of disability and inflexible organizational structure were examples of categories in each of these components. At the same time, these categories were placed in a continuum from conflict to enrichment of work-life interface. Given the presentation of a middle range theory in this research, future researchers are suggested to explore the complementary categories for this theory.