This rapid research paper seeks to aid Lighthouse Charities (LC), a Las Vegas-based refugee-sponsoring organization. Rather than channeling all refugees toward entrepreneurship, LC utilizes a two-pronged entrepreneurial resourcefulness approach. LC creates refugee-focused work integration social enterprises (WISEs) and also supports refugee clients as entrepreneurs. While LC helps many refugees with this approach, LC seeks a more systematic lens (versus a trial-and-error approach) to understand and adjust to the limits of using an ER approach. Experts from three theoretical perspectives (trauma exposure, identity adjustment, and entrepreneurial failure) provide theoretically informed insights into how LC can systematically adjust the ER approach to help refugees by matching resources to opportunities, modifying existing resources to potential opportunities, and transitioning away from resourcefulness.
Rawhouser, Hans, Mazhar Islam, Lisa Jones Christensen, Elizabeth Embry, Trenton Alma Williams, Michael Conger, Cindy Trussel. “Serving Refugees: An Entrepreneurial Resourcefulness Approach” Forthcoming at Journal of Business Venturing Insights
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbvi.2024.e00496