Nuria N. Esteban Lloret, Alicia Rubio Bañon
There is a growing awareness of the fact that entrepreneurship, as a labour option for people with disabilities, is a way of inclusion in the professional world. Inspire of that, most of the literature is not concerned about that circumstance and its focus is on studying either the conditions of the entrepreneurial environment or the characteristics of entrepreneurs.
As a result of this, it is necessary to analyse entrepreneurial competencies of people with disabilities; especially, those competencies that play an important role in the success of their entrepreneurial project, particularly social competences. Moreover, it is possible that, given the particular situation of people with disabilities, such a competence is more frequent in that collective.
In carrying out our analysis, a research study is developed following a questionnaire conducted on 224 persons with certain disabilities.
The results of such research study indicate a good of social competence level including empathy, organisational competence and service orientation. Furthermore, there is a significant relationship between social competence generally speaking, which involves in particular the service orientation dimension, on one hand, and both entrepreneurial condition and the most relevant factors of abandonment of a business, on the other hand. As a consequence of that, the importance of such competence for entrepreneurs with disabilities is emphasized.