Examining Inclusion: Social Entrepreneurship for People with Disabilities in Taiwan

In Taiwan, social entrepreneurship is a trend regarded as an innovative mode of assisting people with disabilities to solve their life challenges and further reduce their consumption of social welfare resources. This perspective focuses on the role of people with disabilities as service users in social enterprises but ignores their roles as service providers in social enterprises. Especially when I reviewed studies on social entrepreneurship and disabilities in Chinese literature, the studies on social entrepreneurs with disabilities were almost nonexistent. By integrating literature on Disability Studies, Human Rights-based Approach, and social entrepreneurship theory, this dissertation conducted in-depth interviews with fifteen social entrepreneurs with disabilities and seven key stakeholders to explore disability entrepreneurial experience within a socio-political context of Taiwan, including their social impacts, startup reasons, and startup barriers. This research finding highlights the social contributions of fifteen disabled social entrepreneurs and further discovers the entrepreneurial resources that can assist them in strengthening their social impacts. The research result will bridge the research gap on disability and entrepreneurship and can be used as a reference for the Taiwanese government to improve current disability employment policy.