Employers’ Capabilities, Opportunities, and Motivations to Employ People with Disabilities

This article explores the capabilities, opportunities, and motivations (COM) for the employment of people with disabilities (PWD) of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Norway and the Netherlands. This COM-B (behavior) model provides useful insights for developing demand-side policies aimed at promoting PWD’s labour-market participation. Four groups of SMEs are distinguished: inclusive SMEs, non-inclusive SMEs, SMEs with the intention to employ PWD (inclusion-willing), and SMEs with past experience in employing PWD (inclusion-experienced). Based on survey data, we found that whereas non-inclusive SMEs score significantly lower on capabilities and opportunities than inclusive SMEs, inclusion-willing and inclusion-experienced SMEs hardly differ from inclusive SMEs. No significant differences were found regarding motivations of the four groups. In addition, the groups’ COM factors hardly differ when they are compared across both countries. Nevertheless, SMEs in both countries do differ with regard to their specific motivations to employ PWD. Implications for policies and employer services are discussed.