Understanding disability entrepreneurship challenges in the literature through the experiences of people with acquired disabilities: an empirical assessment

Purpose Entrepreneurship is an important instrument supporting the social integration of people with disabilities (PwDs) through participation in economic life. Achieving this integration requires creating conditions conducive to entrepreneurial activity among PwDs, which in turn requires identifying the challenges they encounter in this process. The existing literature largely treats disabled entrepreneurs as a homogeneous group and gives limited attention to how the mode of disability acquisition shapes entrepreneurial processes. Yet disability can emerge at different points over the life course, and a substantial share of disabled individuals acquire their disability later in life. This study accordingly focuses on the entrepreneurial experiences of people with acquired disabilities (PwADs), examining the extent to which the existing disability entrepreneurship literature explains the challenges they face. Design/methodology/approach The research is designed as a qualitative study employing directed content analysis. A research framework was first developed from the disability entrepreneurship literature to guide data collection and analysis process. Semi-structured interviews were then conducted with 11 Turkish entrepreneurs with acquired disabilities (EwADs), and the resulting data were analysed against this literature-based framework. Findings Many challenges frequently emphasised in the literature did not align with the experiences of EwADs. Professional experience, sector-specific knowledge and social networks accumulated prior to disability – conceptualised here as “pre-disability capital” – substantially mitigated the challenges typically encountered by PwDs in the entrepreneurial process. Challenges such as lack of start-up capital, lack of working capital and lack of experience were found to be attributable to the nature of entrepreneurship itself rather than to disability. Two challenges not captured by the existing framework also emerged: legal problems linked to disability-pension status and failure to manage or supervise employees among visually impaired entrepreneurs. In conclusion, entrepreneurship was found to play an important, but conditional rather than automatic, role in social inclusion. Originality/value By focusing specifically on PwADs, this study challenges the homogeneous treatment of disabled entrepreneurs in the literature and evaluates the challenges faced by PwADs through a framework developed from the existing literature on the challenges experienced by disabled entrepreneurs. The study also introduces the concept of pre-disability capital to explain this group's distinctive experience. It further examines entrepreneurship's role in the social inclusion of PwADs and suggests that this contribution may be conditional upon the extent to which pre-disability capital can be mobilised and the availability of supportive structural and environmental conditions.