A Design for All: De-Neurotypicalizing Business Schools and Achieving Substantive Performativity

Neurodivergent people experience significant disadvantages obtaining and maintaining employment. Locating our analysis at the intersection of the performativity, neurodiversity, and role of business school literatures, we argue that business schools exacerbate these issues by being designed and operated around neurotypical culture, curriculum, and teaching practices. Substantively redressing these issues and making business schools neuroinclusive requires more than the symbolic performativity that is typically the case with diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. Instead, there is an urgent need to move to substantive performativity through a process that we call de-neurotypicalizing the business school. De-neurotypicalization involves challenging and changing the implicit neurotypical assumptions that pervade business school education and work practices. A key mechanism is applying universal design principles to both learning and work. By taking substantive actions toward de-neurotypicalization, we argue that business schools will make business education genuinely open to both neurodivergent and neurotypical people. Our analysis also advances theory on DEI in business schools by illustrating that universal design offers an inclusive solution to broader equity concerns.