Handicaps and new opportunity businesses: what do we (not) know about disabled entrepreneurs?

Abstract

Purpose The process by which disabled individuals become entrepreneurs can be influenced by factors of different orders. Throughout their entrepreneurship careers and projects, disabled entrepreneurs may have to overcome multiple personal, social and political barriers. This study aims to review what we do (and do not) know about disabled entrepreneurs research to date. Design/methodology/approach The literature review focused on analyzing 42 articles from two databases, namely, Web of Science and Scopus. After the articles were selected, they were grouped into thematic clusters. Findings The results were categorized into four areas, namely, entrepreneurs with disabilities, self-employment as an alternative to unemployment for people with disabilities, barriers faced by disabled entrepreneurs and the importance of education, training and/or orientation for these individuals’ entrepreneurship. The research verified that, in some cases, people with disabilities resort to self-employment and become entrepreneurs to avoid unemployment. Education and training’s positive role in how this process develops is clear as they empower individuals with disabilities and enable them to raise entrepreneurial attitudes. Originality/value Based on the citation profile of articles on disabled entrepreneurs, the results contribute to a better understanding of the flow and main findings of scientific research on this topic over the past 15 years. The findings also include research tendencies that reveal the field’s emergent perspectives, which are of great importance to academics seeking to enhance entrepreneurial processes and policymakers interested in stimulating entrepreneurship education.

Disability entrepreneurship research: Critical reflection through the lens of individual‐opportunity nexus

“…Since our purpose is to encourage further research by applying a mainstream and influential perspective to a nascent field of disability entrepreneurship (see Kraus et al, 2020 for benefits of SLR in a nascent field), this article foregoes quantifying discrete elements such as word associations or frequency in the analysis. This work here should complement a recent systematic review by Mota et al (2020) who have taken a more comprehensive approach to describing the overall literature domain.…”

“…Another 20 studies use quantitative surveys, and some contain a mix of PWDs/EWDs with non-disabled counterparts for comparison (Beisland et al, 2016;Mohammed & Jamil, 2015). Lastly, five articles are based on literature review, though there is only one SLR which is also the most recent (Mota et al, 2020).…”

“…The more normalized entrepreneurship and EWDs become, the better the society is at combating stereotypes about disability (Mota et al, 2020). Pavey (2006)…”

“…The knowledge gap is arguably wider in disability entrepreneurship, which is much more nascent than the aforementioned areas. Disability entrepreneurship research is not yet well understood, fragmented, descriptive and poorly represented in top‐tier journals (Dwertmann, 2016), as recently demonstrated by Mota et al (2020).…”

State And Ways To Increase Employment Of Persons With Disabilities

“…Another tool is the involvement of people with disabilities in business activities. Research by Mota et al (2020) confirmed that people with disabilities become self-employed entrepreneurs to avoid unemployment. For effective employment of disabled people there should be a comprehensive approach that includes a mechanism for interaction between different actors: employment services, educational institutions, public organizations, employers, medical and social expertise institutions (Arbuz, 2018).…”