Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 March 2023
Estimates suggest as much as 17% of the US workforce may be neuroatypical, a term used to describe individuals whose neurological functioning is at the tail ends of the distribution of naturally occurring variation. Although the neuroatypical population has a history of under- and unemployment, their inclusion in the modern workplace (i.e., promotion of neurodiversity within organizations) is gaining recognition by scholars and organizations as an important dimension of organizational diversity. Despite this burgeoning interest in examining neuroatypicality in the context of organizational diversity, surprisingly little research has been conducted that bridges these two research areas. The literature that does exist is scattered across several different academic disciplines, largely outside of industrial-organizational psychology, and rarely examines the employment of neuroatypical workers explicitly from a diversity perspective. In this article we argue that as the nature of work evolves and jobs continue to become more specialized, neurodiversity will become an increasingly relevant dimension of organizational diversity and is likely to play a key role both in terms of individual employees’ well-being and performance outcomes, as well as organizational success.
The work of Arturia Melson-Silimon was supported in part by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (DGE-1443117). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
The work by N. T. Carter, was supported in part by the National Science Foundation under Grant SES-1561070. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
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