Solomon Akele Abebe

Postdoc

Early-stage refugee entrepreneurship : entrepreneurial dispositions, institutions and readiness

Författare

Solomon Akele Abebe
Jiejie Lyu

Summary, in English

Entrepreneurship represents a potential pathway for refugees’ social and economic integration, yet existing research provides limited insight into the roles of entrepreneurial dispositions and perceptions of host-country institutions in shaping refugees’ readiness to initiate start-up activities. Drawing on survey data from Ukrainian refugees in Sweden (n = 92), this study examines the effects of individual-level entrepreneurial orientation dimensions (risk-taking, innovativeness, and proactivity) and crisis-response capacities (resilience and crisis self-efficacy) on entrepreneurial readiness. We further investigate whether these relationships are contingent on refugees’ perceptions of the regulatory, cognitive, and normative institutional environments in their host country. Our results reveal that risk-taking and innovativeness are positively associated with readiness, whereas crisis self-efficacy has a negative effect and may be redirected towards managing post-displacement life demands and adaptation challenges. Institutional perceptions play a conditioning role, with cognitive and normative environments enabling the expression of innovativeness, while regulatory and normative contexts weaken the effect of resilience on readiness. By showing how entrepreneurial dispositions are selectively activated under forced displacement and shaped by institutional conditions, our study extends entrepreneurship theory to refugee contexts and offers practical guidance for designing support initiatives that better align refugees’ individual capacities with institutional conditions.

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