Employment of People with Disabilities in Private and Public Sectors

Abstract

Employers often have prejudices and negative stereotypical attitudes regarding the employment of persons with disabilities (PwD). This is a part of the conclusion of D1.1 Report - Identify and analyze the needs of employers within School-to-Work Transition for Higher education students with disabilities in Serbia, Bosnia & Herzegovina and Montenegro (Trans2Work) project. We are interested in whether there is a difference in attitude between employers in the public and private sectors when it comes to hiring persons with disabilities. The aim of the research was to examine the attitudes of employers in the private and public sectors regarding the employment of persons with disabilities. We hypothesized that employers in the public sector had more positive attitude towards the employment of persons with disabilities in relation to employers in the private sector. The study sample consisted of companies from the private and public sectors in one of two entities in Bosnia and Herzegovina - Republic of Srpska (60 companies in the private sector and 60 companies in the public sector). In this research, we used the Questionnaire about employment of the people with disabilities, which examines the attitude of the employers about employment of the persons with disabilities. The Questionnaire consisted of 19 questions. Employers were asked questions related to the employment of persons with disabilities. The Questionnaire had good reliability and Cronbach alpha coefficient was 0,89. We used two methods in the study: the survey method and the method of theoretical analysis. We used the survey method to conduct data collecting through research instruments, data processing and analysis of the results, while the methods of theoretical analysis were necessary for collection and selection of relevant information from the former methodological and subject-related researches. Results confirmed the assumption that employers in the public sector had more positive attitude towards the employment of persons with disabilities compared with the employers in the private sector. Complete and thorough analysis would be shown in the paper. We hope that the results will contribute to the existing literature related to the employment of persons with disabilities and project Trans2Work in general.