The last decade has seen a remarkable opening of new job opportunities for people who are neurodiverse – a subset of the general population that historically has experienced un- and underemployment rates as high as 85–90%. Neurodiversity takes neurological developments traditionally regarded as disorders, such as autism or dyslexia, and conceptualizes them as normal human variation. Proponents of this perspective suggest that many neurodiverse people possess useful talents and are capable of functioning productively in organizations, but are barred from work opportunities because they are, as exemplars of human variation, ‘at the edges of the bell curve’. The problem, according to this view, is not with neurodiverse people, but with hiring processes that define talent too narrowly, and especially with reliance on job interviews, which are biased against people with atypical manners of interaction. This view accords with early criticisms of employment perspectives viewing diversity as ‘the problem’ rather than the problem as inappropriate management of diversity. Despite slow uptake of this alternative inclusive view of diversity, its validity is being established as prominent companies, such as SAP, Microsoft, DXC Technology, EY, JP Morgan Chase, and Ford begun implementing, since 2013, employment initiatives that de-emphasize interviews in favor of new inclusive recruiting approaches that have led to celebrated successes in hiring neurodiverse people. In this special issue, we examine some of the primary benefits that firms have realized as well as the challenges they have encountered along the way, underscoring the urgent need for researchers and practitioners alike to identify how employment practices can be transformed to be inclusive for all individuals.

Starting with an examination of ‘Persons on the Autism Spectrum’ in the Netherlands (PAS-Nederland), an organization run by and for individuals on the spectrum, the conceptual work in the first paper by van den Bosch and colleagues proposes that autistic people do possess leadership skills, as opposed to more conventional research approaches that traditionally highlight the limitations in executive functioning of autistic employees. Other themes discussed in this paper are the invisibility of autism, diversity of autistic people, and the importance of collaboration of autistic and neuro-typical people. The next article by Waisman-Nitzan, Gal, and Schreuer takes a justice climate lens and presents a qualitative phenomenological study of 11 employers in Israel. It highlights an important lesson: all employees have special needs; in other words, it’s fiscally and ethically unjustifiable to perceive job adjustments for medical purposes (e.g., neurological sensitivity) as a problematic expense when accommodations in the workplace, to increase employee productivity, are already and everyday occurrence. In the article by Annabi and Locke that follows, a theoretical framework is developed that identifies current theoretical limitations concerning the neurodiversity and employment literature. Adapting the Organizational Interventions Mitigating Individual Barriers (OIMIB) framework, the authors synthesize the literature to identify and define the barriers to entering the workforce that autistic and other neurodivergent individuals face. Without appropriate support or accommodations, employees with autism are forced to rely on coping methods to mitigate barriers – for example, masking symptoms by mimicking the behavior of neurotypical colleagues. In Remington and Pellicano article, we get a qualitative look at an internship program with one of the world’s largest financial institutions, Deutsche Bank, where the overarching takeaway is that echoed amongst other MNCs: astonishingly successful, which included several contract extensions for neurodiverse employees. The article provides valuable insight from first-hand accounts of the experiences of autistic employees and their supervisors in a large, for-profit company, and contributes to our understanding of the advantages and challenges of integrating neurodiverse individuals into organizational contexts. Questions that remain, however, are: how does an organization hire neurodiverse-specific employees in a manner that’s both equitable and sustainable? What should the recruitment process look like? These questions are answered by Carrero, Krzeminska, and Härtel in-depth case study analysis of a multi-national technology organization that adopted an effective project-based approach to assessing candidates.

Explore the Neurodiversity special issue from Journal of Management & Organization.