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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.

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.

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.

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.

There is a dearth of studies exploring the intersection of gender and disability within entrepreneurship research. This is despite women’s entrepreneurship research encouraging an expansion of the research questions asked and approaches taken. As a contribution to this debate, the purpose of this paper is to develop an understanding of gender and disability as social categorizations which can shape entrepreneurial opportunities and experiences for disabled women entrepreneurs.

The paper offers an intersectional conceptual lens for the study of disabled women entrepreneurs to explore a concern for a particular social group – women – at a neglected point of intersection – disability – within the social setting of entrepreneurship. Guided by the research question (how can gender and feminist disability theory contribute to the development of an intersectional theoretical lens for future entrepreneurship research?), the potential for new theoretical insights to emerge in the entrepreneurship field is identified.

Through a gender and disability intersectional lens for entrepreneurship research, four theoretical synergies between gender and disability research are identified: the economic rationale; flexibility, individualism and meritocracy; and social and human capital. In addition to the theoretical synergies, the paper highlights three theoretical variances: the anomalous body and bodily variation; sexuality, beauty and appearance; and multiple experiences of care as potentially generative areas for women’s entrepreneurship research. The paper identifies new directions for future gender, disability and entrepreneurship research by outlining research questions for each synergy and variance which draw attention to disabled women entrepreneurs’ experiences of choice and control within and across different spaces and processes of entrepreneuring.

The conceptual intersectional lens offered to study disabled women’s entrepreneurship highlights new directions for exploring experiences of entrepreneuring at the intersection of disability and gender. The paper brings disability into view as a social category that should be of concern to feminist entrepreneurship researchers by surfacing different dimensions of experience to those currently explored. Through the new directions outlined, future research can further disrupt the prevailing discourse of individualism and meritocracy that perpetuates success as an individual’s responsibility, and instead offer the potential for richer understandings of entrepreneuring which has a gender and disability consciousness.

While it is argued that entrepreneurship provides considerable freedom, it is also underlined that it might have the potential for exclusion and oppression. The study contributes to this debate and aims to investigate how entrepreneurs with disabilities (EWD) ascribe meaning to freedom in a contested terrain informed by entrepreneurial autonomy as well as constraints due to impairments and an ableist social environment.

The study uses a qualitative approach and builds upon the critical concepts of negative, positive and social freedom as a theoretical lens for the in-depth analysis of the twenty-nine semi-structured interviews with EWD in Hungary.

Findings indicate that EWD experiences freedom in ambivalent ways. Engaging in the discourse of entrepreneurship offers a subversive discursive toolkit to debunk the constraints established by ableism, enabling both negative and positive freedom. However, individualism being at the heart of entrepreneurship results in othering and undermines social freedom. Thus, while entrepreneurship offers greater individual freedom in both a negative and a positive sense for people with disabilities (PWD), it nevertheless fails to promote collective social change.

Contributing to the critical disability literature, findings contrast the view that having an impairment only reduces a person's abilities and highlight that it also affects the very nature of liberty. Contributing to critical studies on entrepreneurship, the case of EWD provides empirical evidence for understanding the simultaneous emancipatory and oppressive character of entrepreneurship through the interplay of the subjective experience of freedom related to disability and entrepreneurship.

This study examines the relationship between entrepreneurial passion, entrepreneurial support programs and entrepreneurial intention, and the moderating role of entrepreneurial support programs in the relationship between entrepreneurial passion and entrepreneurial intention, among students with physical disabilities in Nigerian tertiary institutions.

This study used a closed-ended questionnaire survey, composed of previously validated scales, to sample 209 students with physical disabilities at tertiary institutions in Nigeria. Hierarchal regression was performed to assess the relationships between the variables and test the hypotheses.

Both entrepreneurial passion and entrepreneurial support programs were found to be significantly positively related to entrepreneurial intention, and entrepreneurial support programs also moderated the relationship between entrepreneurial passion and entrepreneurial intention.

This research paper identifies that developing entrepreneurial passion and providing accessible and inclusive entrepreneurial support programs are valuable in supporting and facilitating a passage into entrepreneurship for those with disabilities.

This research paper addresses calls for further understanding of how those with disabilities can be supported into entrepreneurship, by identifying supporting factors. The research paper provides further understanding of the entrepreneurial passion and intention nexus by exploring the relationship within those with a physical disability, where significant barriers exist and within a developing country context where entrepreneurship might be a necessity rather than driven by passion.

Persons with disabilities (PWD) are among the largest and most diverse minority groups and among the most disadvantaged in terms of employment. Entrepreneurial pursuit is often advocated as a path toward employment, inclusion, and equality, yet few studies have investigated earning variation among PWD.

The authors draw on social cognitive career theory (SCCT), and the disability employment and entrepreneurship literature to develop hypotheses about who among PWD are likely to earn more (less) from entrepreneurial pursuits. The authors then conduct analyses on the nationally representative sample of the Canadian Survey on Disability (CSD) by including all PWD engaged in entrepreneurial pursuit, and matching each to an organizationally employed counterpart of the same gender and race and of similar age and disability severity (n ≈ 810).

Entrepreneurial pursuit has a stronger negative association with the earnings of PWD who experience earlier disability onset ages, those who report more unmet accommodation needs, and those who are female.

First, this study applies SCCT to help bridge the literature on organizational employment barriers for PWD and entrepreneurs with disabilities. Second, we call into question the logic of neoliberalism about entrepreneurship by showing that barriers to organizational employment impact entrepreneurial pursuit decisions and thereby earnings. Third, we extend the understanding of entrepreneurial earnings among PWD by examining understudied disability attributes and demographic attributes. Lastly, this study is among the first to use a matched sample to empirically test the impact of entrepreneurial pursuit on the earnings of PWD.

In the past decade, entrepreneurship research has evolved with the contribution of different scholars, but there is a lack of studies available that focused on entrepreneurship with disabilities. The objective of the research is understanding differently abled entrepreneurs and their entrepreneurial journey. How challenges caused by disability contribute to motivate them to pursue entrepreneurship as a career. This study is based on “Underdog entrepreneurs: Challenge-based entrepreneurship model” theoretical model proposed by Miller and Breton-Miller (2017).

This qualitative research includes case study methodology to study eight differently abled entrepreneurs. All the identified cases are located in the city of Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India. In-depth interviews and multiple visits were scheduled to collect the data. Transcripts of the interview and observation notes were developed for the analysis of the content according to the adopted theoretical model.

Differently abled entrepreneurs show similar traits as the non-disabled entrepreneurs. They are also found to be more resilient and persistent while dealing with the challenges of failure, stress and uncertainty. Difficult conditions and experiences of discrimination indirectly prepare them for tackling challenges while pursuing entrepreneurship. People close to differently abled entrepreneurs play a critical role in shaping and supporting their ventures.

Owing to the lack of authentic information available on disabled entrepreneurs, the study does not include different entrepreneurs with more disabilities such as hearing impairment, speech impairment and mental illness. The study also focuses on the entrepreneurs of Ahmedabad City, Gujarat because of the similar reason.

This paper is an original submission and contributes towards understanding the differently abled entrepreneurs.

The high and persistent unemployment rates of people with intellectual disabilities (PwID) reveal the wide gap that still remains to be bridged. Entrepreneurship combinedly with a high enterprising tendency could improve PwID's life satisfaction.

A mixed-method approach was used, based on questionnaires and structured face-to-face interviews on 37 PwID who had recently become entrepreneurs. Data were firstly quantitatively analyzed using partial least squares-structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM), and qualitative data were used to enable robust findings.

The entrepreneurial tendency of PwID who had recently become entrepreneurs was found to be a positive to their life quality (LQ), job satisfaction and life satisfaction.

This study revealed that entrepreneurship among PwID who had high enterprising tendency enhances their LQ, job satisfaction and life satisfaction. However, further research could evaluate whether becoming an entrepreneur is in itself enough to change PwID's life to better, such that a comparison could be done between PwID who become entrepreneurs and PwID who have a salaried job.

New aspects in the design of public social policies to improve PwID's life satisfaction are suggested. These include the facilitation of both entrepreneurship and enterprising tendency for PwID to enhance their life satisfaction.

There are very few occasions in which PwID set up businesses. This is one of the first studies to analyze the benefit of entrepreneurship and enterprising tendency on the LQ, the satisfaction at work and the life satisfaction of PwID.

Entrepreneurship and disability are discordant because of the assumption that the former is only meant for non-disabled people. Drawing on the capability, agency/structure and social exclusion theories, this study examines the lived experiences of physically challenged women entrepreneurs in the Sekondi-Takoradi Metropolis, Ghana.

The study used a qualitative approach, involving in-depth interview and observation to solicit the views of six physically challenged women entrepreneurs in the Metropolis.

The study found that the physically challenged women consider themselves as women with entrepreneurial minds, capable of actualising and achieving their entrepreneurial well-being, by functioning and proving their capabilities and having the capacities to choose and act independently. The study also found that the structures (physical self, socio-economic, cultural and attitudes, etc.) that confront the women reinforce their capabilities as physically challenged women entrepreneurs. It further found that for these women, being a physically challenged woman entrepreneur demands that one should have self-belief capabilities and being high self-esteem regardless of one’s challenges.

The study is an original submission that makes contributions towards understanding and appreciating the perspectives and lived experiences of capable physically challenged women entrepreneurs in a developing country. There have been studies on women entrepreneurs in Ghana but not specifically on physically challenged women entrepreneurs. This study addresses that gap.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, disability rights found a place on the U.S. policy agenda. However, it did not do so because social movement groups pressured political elites or because politicians were responding to changes in public preferences. Drawing from recent work in neo-institutionalism and social movements, namely the theory of strategic action fields, I posit that exogenous shocks in the 1960s caused a disability policy monopoly to collapse giving way to a new policy community. Using original longitudinal data on congressional committees, hearings, bills, and laws, as well as data from the Policy Agendas Project, I demonstrate the ways in which entrepreneurs pursued a new policy image of rights within a context of increasing committee involvement, issue complexity, and space on the policy agenda, and the consequences this had on policy.

Entrepreneurship is a politically charged discourse. It has positive aspects but also destabilises societal, economic and political power relations, and leads to various categories of inclusion and exclusion. Despite the Western governmental grand narrative that portrays a vision of society whereby the entrepreneurial values such as resourcefulness, risk-taking, self-efficacy, autonomy and confidence can be appropriated by everyone, regardless of their background and profile, entrepreneurship does not often elevate and liberate marginalised people who are in subordinate positions. Presupposed assumptions of entrepreneurship should be challenged when pursuing the lines of critical inquiry as advocated in this chapter. Entrepreneurship is not only a socio-economic process but also functions as a political ideology, which can be instrumental in reproducing and reinforcing conservative assumptions and actions and hence shape public policy and public perception in ways that serve conservative political or capitalist ends, as evident in the case of social enterprise and entrepreneurship in the UK. Therefore, policy implications of the intersection of diversity and entrepreneurship are fundamentally important.