Caring labor performance and employment barriers among parents of children with autism spectrum disorder: An organizational behavior and bioethics perspective, with conceptual reflections on AI-informed neuroleadership
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) diagnoses continue to rise globally, yet the employment consequences for parents providing daily care remain largely overlooked in management research. This paper examines the employment challenges faced by parents of children with ASD through organizational behavior, bioethics, and a conceptual discussion of artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled neuroleadership as a prospective, non-empirically tested management approach. Although employment participation is often framed as an individual responsibility, this study demonstrates how workplace cultures, managerial practices, scheduling policies, and organizational attitudes toward caregiving substantially influence caregivers’ ability to remain active in the labor market. Data were collected through a structured questionnaire originally designed to investigate mobility and transport-accessibility experiences of caregivers of children with ASD. The analysis integrates descriptive empirical findings with organizational, ethical, and emerging AI-informed management perspectives to explore how socioeconomic status, caregiving intensity, and disability severity intersect with workplace expectations. The study further conceptually highlights the potential of AI-enabled workforce analytics, intelligent scheduling systems, and data-driven decision-support tools to support neuroleadership practices that enhance workplace flexibility, employee wellbeing, and organizational responsiveness to caregiving needs; no AI tools or validated neuroleadership instruments were applied or tested empirically in this study. However, the ethical implementation of such technologies requires careful consideration of transparency, fairness, privacy, and human oversight. Grounded in the principles of justice, autonomy, care, and sustainability, the study argues that equitable employment for caregivers requires organizational environments that combine empathetic leadership with innovative AI-supported management approaches. The study contributes to research on organizational behavior and health management by conceptualizing employment inclusion for caregivers of autistic children as both an ethical and sustainability imperative and a promising, conceptually framed area for future application of AI-enabled neuroleadership within healthcare, educational, and public-service organizations.
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