The road to entrepreneurship with impairments: A challenges-adaptive mechanisms-results model for disabled entrepreneurs

Abstract

This article explores how different challenges potentially inspire those deemed impaired to engage with entrepreneurship and how they overcome such challenges through different adaptive mechanisms. Taking an interpretive perspective, we undertook semi-structured interviews with 13 entrepreneurs with impairments, providing an understanding of the relationship between challenges and the adaptive mechanisms that led to business and personal attainments. Based on our empirical findings, we propose a new challenges-adaptive mechanisms-results (CARE) model contributing to the literature on disabled entrepreneurship among those with impairments and also provide insights into the entrepreneurial endeavours of the disabled population.

Motives for entrepreneurship and establishing one’s own business among people with disabilities: Findings from a scoping review

“…In the Spanish study by Navarro and Martínez (2019), the informants stated that they had become self-employed to increase their income; and in Ostrow et als' US study (2019), more than 80 per cent of respondents cited this reason. Increased income is also an establishment motive in a study from India (Saxena and Pandya 2018) and in a study involving informants from Honduras, Mexico, Chile, and Spain (Hsieh, Molina, and Weng 2019). People having started their own business out of necessity rather than as an opportunity is also evident in Olaz-Capitán and Ortiz-García (2019) Spanish study, in which the most common establishment motive among informants was to increase their own income.…”

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

“…They are people with entrepreneurial initiative, service orientation, capacity for teamwork, leadership, conflict management and transparency. Their character is open; they are sociable people, who value positively feeling wrapped in their entrepreneurial initiative" (p. 16) Hsieh et al (2019) "For many of the disabled entrepreneurs, after their extensive experience of overcoming barriers and problem solving, they had achieved patience and perseverance, both important characteristics for entrepreneurs . .…”

“…Social entrepreneurship can be an especially good employment strategy for disabled people (Harris et al, 2014), helping them overcome the difficulties and barriers associated with entering the labour market. Hsieh et al (2019) present a care model that seeks to help entrepreneurs with disabilities overcome their limitations and the challenges encountered during their entrepreneurial journey.…”

Disadvantage Entrepreneurship: Decoding a New Area of Research

“…Next to seniors, immigrants and young people, women are among the key target groups of the OECD's inclusive entrepreneurship policy agenda, aimed at expanding entrepreneurship in order to create jobs, leverage technological development and meet economic and social challenges (OECD/European Union, 2019). Compared to a rather large body of literature focusing on constructive and positive characteristics of successful disadvantaged entrepreneurs (Balcazar et al, 2014; Saxena and Pandya, 2018; Hsieh et al, 2019) there are fewer attempts to address the impact of negative personal circumstances (Miller and Breton‐Miller, 2017; Hsieh et al, 2019).…”