Earnings of persons with disabilities: Who earns more (less) from entrepreneurial pursuit?

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/EDI-09-2021-0239
• Published date: 22 March 2022
• Date: 22 March 2022
• Pages: 847-865
• Subject Matter: HR & organizational behaviour,Employment law,Diversity,equality,inclusion
• Author: Yang Yang,Mukta Kulkarni,David Baldridge,Alison M. Konrad

Earnings of persons with

disabilities: Who earns more (less)

from entrepreneurial pursuit?

Yang Yang

Rohrer College of Business, Rowan University, Glassboro, New Jersey, USA

Mukta Kulkarni

Indian Institute of Management Bangalore, Bangalore, India

David Baldridge

Management-College of Business, Oregon State University,

Corvallis, Oregon, USA, and

Alison M. Konrad

Ivey Business School, Western University, London, Canada

Abstract

Purpose –Persons with disabilities (PWD) are among the largest and most diverse minority groups and

among the most disadvantaged in terms of employment. Entrepreneurial pursuit is often advocated as a path

toward employment, inclusion, and equality, yet few studies have investigated earning variation among PWD.

Design/methodology/approach –The authors draw on social cognitive career theory (SCCT), and the

disability employment and entrepreneurship literature to develop hypotheses about who among PWD are

likely to earn more (less) from entrepreneurial pursuits. The authors then conduct analyses on the nationally

representative sample of the Canadian Survey on Disability (CSD) by including all PWD engaged in

entrepreneurial pursuit, and matching each to an organizationally employed counterpart of the same gender

and race and of similar age and disability severity (n≈810).

Findings –Entrepreneurial pursuit has a stronger negative association with the earnings of PWD who

experience earlier disabilityonset ages, those who report more unmet accommodation needs, and those who are

female.

Originality/value –First, this study applies SCCT to help bridge the literature on organizational employment

barriers for PWD and entrepreneurs with disabilities. Second, we call into question the logic of neoliberalism

about entrepreneurship by showing that barriers to organizational employment impact entrepreneurial pursuit

decisions and thereby earnings. Third, we extend the understanding of entrepreneurial earnings among PWD

by examining understudied disability attributes and demographic attributes. Lastly, this study is among the

first to use a matched sample to empirically test the impact of entrepreneurial pursuit on the earnings of PWD.

Keywords Disabilities, Social cognitive career theory (SCCT), Entrepreneurial pursuit, Onset age,

Accommodation, Disability origin

Paper type Research paper

Introduction

Worldwide,there are over a billionpersons with disabilities(PWD) who experienceunfavorable

socioeconomic outcomes as compared to people without disabilities (World Bank, 2019). In

Canada,where this research is conducted,an estimated 3.8 million or 13.7%of adult Canadians

havea disability(Statistics Canada,2013). Increasinglyunstable and unpredictablejob markets

are expected to particularly impact the careers and livelihoods of PWD (Torres, 2020), and

scholarsnote that disability needsto be viewed as an increasinglycommon diversity, inclusion,

and equalityissue in sustaining careersacross the lifespanof individuals (Brzykcy and Boehm,

Entrepreneurial

pursuit and

earnings of

PWD

847

Alison M. Konrad, PhD gratefully acknowledges funding for this project from the Corus Entertainment

Chair in Women in Management and from the Ivey Business School.

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:

https://www.emerald.com/insight/2040-7149.htm

Received 20 September 2021

Revised 15 December 2021

17 February 2022

Accepted 3 March 2022

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion:

An International Journal

Vol. 41 No. 6, 2022

pp. 847-865

© Emerald Publishing Limited

2040-7149

DOI 10.1108/EDI-09-2021-0239

2022). Nonetheless, PWD continue to face employment discrimination —beginning with

barriers to organizational entry (Bjørnshagen and Ugreninov, 2021) and continuing to lower

earningsfrom organizationalemployment (Friedman,2020;Gundersonand Lee, 2016). As such,

entrepreneurial pursuit, which is defined synonymously as self-employment or performing

work for personalprofit (Norstedt and Germundsson,2021), is often proposed as an important

career alternative, especially given the barriers to traditional organizational employment

(Konrad et al., 2013;Lengnick-Hall et al., 2008). Indeed, over the last two decades, the rate of

businessventuring has been consistentlyhigher for PWD, sometimesalmost double the rate of

such pursuits among those without a disability (Ashley and Graf, 2018;Bureau of the Labor

Statistics, 2015;Pag

an, 2009). Research, however, has not reached a consensus regarding

whether entrepreneurial pursuit generally creates financial benefits for PWD, and more

specifically, whoearn more or less from entrepreneurial pursuit.

Disability-related research on job crafting and self-acco mmodation suggests that

entrepreneurial pursuits provide greater autonomy and opportunity for PWD to fully use

their abilities (e.g. Baldridge and Kulkarni, 2017) as opposed to organizational employment

opportunities that are typically designed for non-disabled people based on ideologies of

species-typical ableism (e.g. Jammaers and Zanoni, 2021). However, stigma, stereotypes, and

systemic barriers to organizational employment might constrain career choices for those with

a disability, making entrepreneurship their only viable option. Consequently, PWD engaged

in entrepreneurial pursuit have lower earnings, as is typically the case with entrepreneurship

that is taken up out of necessity (necessity entrepreneurship) (cf. Renko et al., 2016). Given the

understudied nature of this topic and the negligible research on the potential moderators of

the association between entrepreneurial pursuit and earnings, we draw upon social cognitive

career theory (SCCT) and the disability employment and entrepreneurship literature to

address these gaps. Specifically, our research objective is to explore who among PWD are

likely to earn more (less) from entrepreneurial pursuits. Toward this objective, we analyze the

nationally representative sample of the Canadian Survey on Disability (CSD) by including all

PWD who are engaged in entrepreneurial pursuit, and matching each to an organizationally

employed counterpart of the same gender and race, of similar age, and with similar disability

severity (n≈810).

In so doing,we make the followingcontributionsto the literature. First,entrepreneurswith a

disability remain a relatively “forgotten minority”in entrepreneurship research. There is a

dearth of research that examines entrepreneurship and disability (cf. Renko et al., 2016), and

there are calls to study entrepreneurial outcomes for those with challenging backgrounds,

including PWD (Miller and Le Breton-Miller, 2017) . This study allows us to step away from the

mainstream, and instead, highlight the diversity among entrepreneurswith a disability.Second,

we call into question the logic of neoliberalism about entrepreneurship (Ahl and Marl ow, 2021)

by showing that barriers to equal employment opportunities also impact entrepreneurial pursuit

and thereby earnings. The logic of neoliberalism, which emphasizes enhancing personal

achievements and returns through agentic action within free markets, largely ignores ableism in

organizational employment, which might spill over to affect entrepreneurship as a career choice

and the subsequent outcomes for PWD. Third, we extend SCCT to the study of entrepreneurial

earnings among PWD by examining disability attributes (i.e. disability onset age, unmet

accommodation needs, work-related disability origin) and demographic attributes (i.e. gender

and age) that are understudied, but that can be expected to be associated with barriers to

organizational employment, impeding the PWD’s career interests and choices (Lent, 2005;Lent

et al., 1994,2002). Doing so allows us to answer calls to examine individual differences beyond

disability whenreferring to thecollective witha disability (Stone and Colella, 1996), and to reveal

thebroader influencesof ableismoperating inthe workplace.Lastly, thisstudy is among thefirst

to use a matched sample to empirically test the impact of entrepreneurial pursuit on the earnings

of PWD relative to organizationally employed counterparts. Moreover, we study a

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