Entrepreneurial Activity Dimensions: A study in the persons with disability

Resumo

This monograph addresses entrepreneurship in people with sensory and organic disabilities. This is a work that gathers the research executed in Spain on this group, financed by the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (CSO2016-75818-R), Agencia Estatal de Investigación (AEI) and Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (FEDER) and whose objective is to know the entrepreneurial skills of people with disabilities, the obstacles with which they find themselves at the time of materializing an entrepreneurial activity, as well as possible solutions that would allow their start-up. Like all research, part of the verification of a reality that, in this case, is none other than the difficulties of labor insertion of this group. This marks the first significant difference concerning people who do not have disabilities of this character. The latest available data, obtained from surveys on the subject, point to a labor insertion gap in Spain of just over a third of employment compared to people without disabilities. Self-Employment or entrepreneurship is also less in this group. This data is indicating that, in addition to the limitations inherent in disability, there are possibly many others derived from the image and representation that society makes about people with disabilities. Therefore, studies aimed at highlighting the entrepreneurial potential of these people are of particular interest. This research is in this line of action. A qualitative methodology based on in-depth, semi-structured, individualized and oral interviews has been used to achieve this objective. It has been considered the most appropriate technique to provide a higher degree of freedom to the interviewee and the interviewer, which has facilitated the collection of different nuances in the speech. Regarding the profile of the people interviewed, these are men and women with a sensory or an organic disability who have undertaken or have considered doing so. The discourse analysis has been carried through with the professional software ATLAS.TI, and has been performed on the textual levels (from codified citations) and conceptual (the level at which the relationships between codes and citations have been worked out). Finally, the script design of the interview has responded to the different dimensions from which the entrepreneurship is addressed and its characteristics in this group: personal/psychological, institutional/legal, cultural/ environmental, educational/training, economic/family. These aspects, together with the analysis of the differences in the entrepreneurship of the collective and the prospective of this activity, are treated in the different articles that make up this monograph.