Volume 3, ISSUE1/2012 - Review of Applied Socio-Economic ...

ISSN: 2247-6172
ISSN-L: 2247-6172
Review of Applied Socio- Economic Research
(Volume 3, Issue 1/ 2012 ), pp. 95
URL: http://www.reaser.eu
e-mail: editors@reaser.eu
Entrepreneurial behavior at people with visual disabilities from
Romania
Alina Gîmbută 1
“ Al.I.Cuza” University of Iasi, Romania 1
Abstract: 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…
Keywords: entrepreneurial behavior, people with disabilities, socially assisted people, entrepreneurial education,
inclusive democratic society, visually impaired people
JEL codes: L26, Z13, I24, I25
1. Entrepreneurship---an accessible alternative for all?
The speed pulse of the social, economic and technological development has revealed, in the last years of
the twentieth century, the necessity to promote a new knowledge-based society and an innovation-based
economy in Europe and not just here…The contemporary human been, assaulted by new and various
provocations, was the key element in this transformative context, but was and still is a vulnerable one; he/she
must adapt to all the new complex instruments and the sensitive intersections between the labor market and
the personal life requirements, trying to be autonomous, to decide freely, without loosing the identity in a
profound interconnected world.
As a European citizen, the contemporary individual must reset educational and existential perspectives
using marks and performance trajectories which are accepted by a common knowledge society, as open
1 PhD Student, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Educational Sciences Department
email contact: cgimbuta@yahoo.