Crisis perceptions among Ukrainian refugee entrepreneurs: Psychological antecedents and venture progress

Refugees face challenging circumstances. We contend that facing extreme adversity, in addition to the uncertainty always associated with entrepreneurship, renders entrepreneurship particularly challenging. We propose that heightening perceptions of opportunities and dampening perceptions of constraints are critical for refugees to engage in entrepreneurial action – and that in turn psychological capital and personal initiative are important antecedents of these perceptions. In this study, we follow Ukrainian refugee entrepreneurs participating in entrepreneurship training programs in Denmark, Sweden and Norway (n = 179). We investigate the extent to which they perceive other ongoing, causally entangled crises as opportunities or constraints; how an individual’s psychological capital together with personal initiative shapes these crises perceptions; and the impact of these perceptions on entrepreneurial progress. We find that refugee entrepreneurs perceive crises as opportunities more than as constraints, that individual characteristics matter for crisis perception and that crisis opportunity perception positively influences progress. We discuss implications for government support programs.