CAREER MOTIVATORS AND DYNAMICS OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN THE DEAF COMMUNITY

Abstract

The entrepreneurship proclivities of the deaf and hard-of-hearing community are under-researched or often grouped together into the broad disability literature. This study represents the first effort in developing a framework for deaf entrepreneurship. It departs from prior work by employing a mixed method study to examine the drivers, career motivations and prevalence of entrepreneurial activity of the deaf community in the United States. Building on the nascent entrepreneurship disability literature, this research develops and tests a deaf entrepreneurship framework. Results indicate that entrepreneurship in the deaf community is limited, primarily driven by push-oriented motivations–tightly linked to unique contextual factors. It also finds that the dynamics of entrepreneurship in the deaf community differ substantially from the existing disability entrepreneurship literature revealing the need for different policies. Implications for theory and policy along with directions for future research are discussed.