When the state managerializes the law: Enforcing and commodifying disability inclusion

Abstract

While disability inclusion is promoted in many countries, policy reforms in France have shifted the conversation about anti-discrimination laws toward financial concerns by increasing financial penalties for non-compliance and developing various accounting techniques to reduce these penalties. In this article, we explore the unintended consequences of focusing on accounting in the design of disability laws, specifically, the commodification of disability inclusion. Through a qualitative study of disability inclusion in France, we show how state actors designed and interpreted the law to appeal to businesses through creating legal loopholes and strong financial incentives and explain how this encouraged the commodification of disability inclusion. We show how this commodification is detrimental to disabled workers and prevents substantive compliance with an existing quota. While scholarship has explored how companies managerialize the law, this article demonstrates how the state is complicit in this process. This article contributes to the literature at the crossroads of law, organizations, and critical accounting by showing some of the drivers and consequences of the commodification of inclusion at work. We demonstrate how translating legal mandates into accounting tools can be a central mechanism of managerialization, leading to the commodification of legal ideals.