We are thrilled to share this article on Vulnerabilities experienced by Everyday Entrepreneurs, co-authored by our Chair members Maximilian Bauer and Prof. Dr. Shashi Matta, in the Journal of Business Research.
Open Access: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2026.116325
We focus on entrepreneurs overlooked in mainstream entrepreneurship research: Everyday Entrepreneurs in the Informal Economy – street vendors, home-based producers, micro-retailers, and small informal business owners whose work keeps local economies running every day.
They provide essential services, create livelihoods, and support communities. Yet they often operate under severe constraints: weak legal protection, limited access to finance, unstable infrastructure, social exclusion, skill gaps, and increasing climate-related risks.
In this conceptual article, we ask:
How can we move from only describing these vulnerabilities to actively thinking about how they can be mitigated?
To address this question, we integrate a strength-based approach with established entrepreneurship theories, including Effectuation, RBV, Bricolage, and Jugaad. Our key argument is that entrepreneurship theory already tells us a lot about how entrepreneurs act under constraint. But it often treats vulnerability as background context.
We shift vulnerability to the center of the analysis. The paper develops a multi-level framework showing how vulnerabilities experienced by everyday entrepreneurs can be mitigated when strengths are activated and aligned across three levels: Individual level, Organizational level, and Policy level.
One central insight from the paper is simple but important:
Everyday entrepreneurs should not be seen only through what they lack. They also possess capabilities, knowledge, relationships, creativity, and resilience. But these strengths can only translate into sustained well-being when organizational and policy actors also do their part.
This article contributes to research in entrepreneurship, customer vulnerability, and transformative service research by developing a framework and research agenda for strength-based mitigation of vulnerability.
