Not your “typical” research: Inclusion ethics in neurodiversity scholarship

Abstract

Research focusing on neurodiversity1 is critical for including all marginalized populations in the organizational diversity literature and for promoting theoretical innovation. It is imperative that such research models the ethics of inclusion (Gowen et al., 2019; Nicolaidis et al., 2019). Despite positive intent, majority group researchers have historically produced biased scholarship on novel marginalized populations (Colella et al., 2017). As all research includes some subjective bias, neurotypical researchers are likely to publish information that further marginalizes neurodivergent2 people as they inherently do not have the lived experience of being neurodivergent themselves. Researchers should include the perspectives of the members of the populations they are conducting research on and aim to support neurodivergent voices. We recommend that researchers (a) include neurodivergent research team members3 when researching neurodiversity and (b) strengthen the marginalized participant impact on research findings through methods like qualitative and participatory action research, especially if including neurodivergent research team members is not feasible despite legitimate attempts to do so.