Entrepreneurial behavior at people with visual disabilities from Romania

In recent years, the active entrepreneurship is a very promoted alternative in Europe, due to its effects of individual and community development (European Commission, 2003, 2004). Although, the European Union had a hesitant and slow policy for supporting and stimulating the small businesses and entrepreneurship was just a recommendation, starting from the appearance of the Green Paper for Entrepreneurship by 2003, it has been recognised as an opportunity and a viable solution for the crisis of a lagged economy and a changing European society (Lisbon European Council, 2000; Thurik, 2009). Based on the actuality of the entrepreneurship issue, an academic investigation has been initiated focused on entrepreneurial behaviour at people with visual disabilities from Romania, people who, often stay in “the shadow” of the research intentions because they belong to a minority segment of population that “does not seem“ to be very relevant to a society’s collective destiny. The paper presents the results of a questionnaire application on a 201 subject’s lot and five individual interviews with Romanian impaired businessmen, but it also proposes to change the perception perspective to the disabled persons, redirecting attention to certain features which have many consequences in the psychological, economic and social areas, both individual and collective. The focus on the disabled population segment should not be neglected because, beyond the vulnerability dimension, but in a close relation with this, such people develop a dependence relation with the state, when they legally become socially assisted, and learn the dependence status by the exercise of daily life. Under these conditions, entrepreneurship can be another kind of daily exercise, but an exercise for independence…