Disability, illness
& working life
Disclosure, credibility and participation when illness is invisible, capacity fluctuates, or workplaces assume uninterrupted performance.
PROF ARMAND BAM
Who belongs?
Who contributes?
Who decides?
My work examines how inclusion is experienced, how leadership responds, and how institutions can create conditions for participation and social change.
STELLENBOSCH BUSINESS SCHOOL · SOUTH AFRICA
Prof Armand Bam
Inclusion. Leadership.
Social change.
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR
Stellenbosch Business School
HEAD OF SOCIAL IMPACT
Research, business & community
ACADEMIC HEAD
Small Business Academy
2024 INDIVIDUAL AWARD
SU Social Impact Award
01 / RESEARCH & SCHOLARSHIP
Inclusion as
a lived experience.
Research into the relationships, structures
and everyday decisions that shape
participation and belonging.
Disability, illness
Enterprise
& opportunity
The experiences of women entrepreneurs and the conditions that make support, participation and opportunity meaningful.
Leadership, ethics
& social impact
How leaders navigate power, responsibility and competing demands, and how institutions connect their commitments with practice.
Selected publications
Adaptive occupational alignment: a processual model of workforce reintegration after spinal cord injury
How structural conditions, relational support and adaptive agency shape sustained participation at work.
Reframing the spaces between us: Culture, power and the labour-leadership disconnect in a post-colonial Global South society
A power-conscious perspective on cultural legitimacy, trust and organisational inclusion.
Invisible battles: the disability paradox and workplace experiences of individuals with lupus
Fatigue, mental health and the workplace structures that shape experiences of invisible disability.
Contingent coherence and relational inclusion: women, work, and invisible illness
How women with lupus navigate credibility, disclosure and the relational demands of working life.
Performing wellness, concealing pain: a gendered continuum of challenges for women with lupus in the workplace
Diagnosis, identity and workplace adaptation through women’s accounts of episodic illness.
Workplace narratives of South African employees with multiple sclerosis
Workplace adaptability, disclosure and support through a sensemaking and social model of disability lens.
Showing 6 selected publications.
View the full publication recordIDEAS FROM THE RESEARCH
Concepts to
think with.
Accessible introductions to frameworks
developed through research on
women, work and invisible illness.
Contingent coherence
When health and energy fluctuate, maintaining a sense of professional identity, credibility and belonging can require continuous adjustment. Contingent coherence describes that work of holding things together through calibration.
The framework examines four persistent tensions: disclosure and protection; credibility and capacity; aspiration and sustainability; and policy and practice.
Read the framework in its published contextRelational inclusion
Inclusion takes shape through relationships as well as policies. The Relational Framework of Inclusion identifies trust, responsiveness and ethical proximity as enabling conditions for support.
It asks whether people can trust those around them, whether support responds to changing needs, and whether others remain close enough to recognise and act on those needs.
Read the published frameworkContinuum of embodied challenges
Women living with lupus move between medical ambiguity, identity negotiation and workplace adaptation. These experiences overlap and recur as health, diagnosis and organisational circumstances change.
The continuum helps explain why support needs to account for uncertainty and fluctuation across working life.
Read the published framework02 / PUBLIC VOICE
Ideas belong
in public.
Writing on leadership, belonging
and our responsibilities to one another.
Selected perspectives and commentary.
The Power of Networks: Why Alumni Matter More Than Ever for Social Impact
The possibilities of sustained relationships between business, universities and communities.
Read perspectiveStellenbosch, Transformation, and the Unfinished Business of Belonging
Reflecting on institutional change and the everyday experience of belonging.
Read perspectiveThe Weight Women Carry: The Stories We Refuse to See
Bringing women’s experiences of illness, work and visibility into public conversation.
Read perspective03 / TEACHING & SPEAKING
Questions that change
how we lead.
Learning through critical reflection,
lived experience and engagement
with the world beyond the classroom.
IN THE CLASSROOM
Business in society.
My teaching connects leadership and organisational decisions with their effects on people and communities. It creates space to examine assumptions about power, responsibility and inclusion.
- MBA Business in Society
- MBA Diversity and Inclusion
- Leadership Development
- Health Care Management
- Futures Studies
IN THE CONVERSATION
Speaking & facilitation.
Keynotes, panel contributions and facilitated conversations that bring scholarship into leadership practice and public debate.
Inclusion & belongingDisability & invisible illnessEthical leadershipCommunity engagementEnterprise & opportunityBusiness & social responsibility
Discuss an invitation04 / ABOUT ARMAND
Scholarship
in relationship
with society.
I’m Prof Armand Bam, an Associate Professor and Head of Social Impact at Stellenbosch Business School.
I also serve as Academic Head of the Small Business Academy. My work brings research, teaching and community engagement into conversation, with a focus on inclusion and the everyday conditions that enable participation.
My research draws on perspectives including the social model of disability, feminist disability studies, paradox theory and an ethic of care. Across these perspectives, I am interested in whose experiences institutions recognise and how responsibility is shared.
Before entering my current academic role, I worked in nonprofit leadership, including as Executive Director of the League of Friends of the Blind. I hold a PhD in Business Administration and an MPhil in Disability Studies from the University of Cape Town.
In 2024, I received Stellenbosch University’s Individual Social Impact Award.
SEPARATE ADVISORY PRACTICE
I am developing Purpose and Legacy, a philanthropy advisory business for entrepreneurs and families seeking a thoughtful approach to giving.
Explore Purpose and Legacy05 / CONNECT
Let’s take
the conversation
further.
For research collaboration, academic engagement, media enquiries or speaking invitations, share a little about what you have in mind.
info@armandbam.co.za+27 71 633 0699Cape Town, South Africa