Self-Employment Success and Challenges

Scott H. Yamamoto and Deborah L. Olson

SAGE Open, 2016, vol. 6, issue 3, 2158244016665892

Abstract: There have been indications that self-employment could be a viable option for individuals with disabilities. Unfortunately, the sparse empirical literature limits our understanding of the phenomenon. Thus, the present study sought to contribute new knowledge. An empirical study was conducted of individuals with disabilities who were self-employed through vocational rehabilitation (VR) services. Individual and in-depth, in-person qualitative interviews were conducted with VR counselors and clients. From our analyses emerged three predominant themes: relationship dynamics, system mechanics, and social identities. Relationship dynamics described facets of counselor–client interactions; system mechanics described facets of procedures in a self-employment case; and social identities described facets of self-employment case development. These themes highlighted and explained differences between counselors’ and clients’ perspectives on self-employment success and challenges. While tentative, the findings in the present study inform the conceptual framework in new ways while also circumscribing implications for researchers, VR counselors and administrators, and government policymakers.

Keywords: self-employment; individuals with disabilities; vocational rehabilitation; qualitative research; constant-comparative method (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2158244016665892 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:sagope:v:6:y:2016:i:3:p:2158244016665892

DOI: 10.1177/2158244016665892

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in SAGE Open
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().