Why has a woman with mental illness been fired? Discourses on fairness and diversity management

Being fired can be perceived as a form of unfair treatment and as a personal and social defeat. It can generate feelings of anger, outrage and resentment that can elicit a desire for retribution. This qualitative study focuses on a case of failed integration of a person with a mental illness at the workplace. Texts were analysed from a rhetorical perspective, considering how the company leaders and the employee re-constructed and gave meaning to the events that lead to the firing, trying to justify them. Policies dealing with workplace diversity and the hiring of people with disabilities, power relations, fit between organizational goals and ideal models of behaviour in the company on one hand, and personal needs of the employee on the other, seem to be determinant in influencing the perception the parties have of interactional and procedural justice.