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Small Business Economics
Published in: Small Business Economics 1/2022

03-10-2020

Overcoming the liability of poorness: disadvantage, fragility, and the poverty entrepreneur

Authors: Michael H. Morris, Donald F. Kuratko, David B. Audretsch, Susana Santos

Published in: Small Business Economics | Issue 1/2022

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Abstract

All entrepreneurs must overcome the liabilities of newness and smallness as they attempt to launch and grow a new venture. However, those in poverty face an even greater challenge due to a concept we introduce, known as the liability of poorness, which centers on literacy gaps, a scarcity mindset, intense non-business pressures, and the lack of a safety net. Each of these components of the liability of poorness contributes to the disadvantage and fragility of the enterprises confronting the poor. Implications of this fragility for venture dynamics as well as how some poverty entrepreneurs overcome this liability are explored. Research priorities are discussed for ongoing work on the liability of poorness.
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Footnotes
1
While many businesses launched by those in poverty could be labeled “self-employment ventures” and by definition not automatically considered “entrepreneurial ventures” in the traditional sense, we keep the term “poverty entrepreneur” in alignment with Morris et al. (2015) who stressed the importance of every size venture contributing to economic development as an entrepreneurial venture. In addition, Morris and Kuratko (2020) argue that entrepreneurs create different type of ventures, including survival, lifestyle, managed growth, and aggressive growth, and that there are elements of entrepreneurial behavior involved in creating each, while the level of entrepreneurship or entrepreneurial orientation is progressively higher in moving across the four venture types. Thus, a self-employed venture is considered to be entrepreneurial in this article.
 
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Metadata
Title
Overcoming the liability of poorness: disadvantage, fragility, and the poverty entrepreneur
Authors
Michael H. Morris
Donald F. Kuratko
David B. Audretsch
Susana Santos
Publication date
03-10-2020
Publisher
Springer US
Published in
Small Business Economics / Issue 1/2022
Print ISSN: 0921-898X
Electronic ISSN: 1573-0913
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11187-020-00409-w

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