Managerial Skills Required by Entrepreneurs with Physical and Mobility Disabilities

Employment of disabled people in the past decades has been particularly important all over the world. Studies have introduced entrepreneurship as a worthy alternative for this marginalized group of people due to the different problems they encounter to get employment. The results of studies also suggested that entrepreneurial skills highly affect entrepreneurs’ success. Using qualitative research method, this study aims to identify the managerial skills that entrepreneurs with physically and mobility disabilities require to successfully establish and run a new business. Semi-structured interview was employed to collect the data from nine entrepreneurs with physical and mobility disabilities and two educational managers who were highly involved in developing and implementing educational and training programs for these people. The results suggest that people with disabilities need to have specific managerial skills that enable them to successfully run a new venture. Although we identified managerial skills such as marketing, planning and goal setting, decision making, growth and development management and efficient use of resources, we only presented the emerging managerial skills that have not yet been formally specified for managing a new business by disabled entrepreneurs. These skills are: networking skills, scanning the environment, awareness of the legal rights of disabled people, and persuasion skills.