Why People with MS are Really Leaving Work: From a Clayton’s Choice to an Ugly Passage – A Phenomenological Study
Main Article Content
Keywords
Multiple Sclerosis, employment, discrimination
Abstract
Where some studies have suggested that people with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) may leave a workplace as a result of disease progression, this qualitative study, situated in Australia, found that people with MS might really be leaving work as a result of ugly organizational processes. The influence of discrimination and a hostile work environment on the careers of people with MS seem to have been under-emphasized in previous studies. Two themes are reported that support this contention: that the decision to leave a workplace is effectively a “Clayton’s Choice”-- the choice you have when you don’t really have a choice -- and “An Ugly Passage.”
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Margaret Vickers, Associate Professor and Director of Research, School of Management, College of Business, University of Western Sydney
Margaret Vickers, Ph.D., is Associate Professor and Director of Research, School of Management, College of Business, University of Western Sydney, Sydney, Australia. She has researched many aspects of workplace adversity: bullying in the workplace, being made redundant, living and working with unseen chronic illness, caring for a child with disability while working full time, emotions in the workplace, and living with mental illness. She is the author in excess of 90 international refereed publications including her research books Work and Unseen Chronic Illness: Silent Voices (Routledge, New York and London, 2001) and Working and Caring for a Child with Chronic Illness: Disconnected and Doing it All (Palgrave MacMillan, London, 2006), London. Professor Vickers is Co-Editor of the Employee Responsibilities and Rights Journal, and an editorial/international advisory board member of Review of Disability Studies: An International Journal, Qualitative Research in Organizations and Management: An International Journal, Administrative Theory & Praxis and the International Journal of Action Research. She can be contacted via e-mail at [email protected].