Building resources and resilience through the crisis for Ukrainian entrepreneurs (RES²CUE)

• Applicants: Professor Dr. David Bendig; Professorin Dr. Julia Kensbock
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 518069799

The Russian invasion of Ukraine represents a serious and potentially traumatic life event for millions of Ukrainians. Collective negative events such as these occur suddenly, affect large groups of people simultaneously, and profoundly change the lives of every individual. Given the drastic consequences of collective life events, we still know too little about their impact on economic behavior and, in particular, on entrepreneurial behavior.The RES²CUE project ("Building resources and resilience through the crisis for Ukrainian entrepreneurs") aims to better understand the impact of adverse life events - especially war and refugee experiences - on entrepreneurship. Individuals, firms, and communities affected by warfare typically experience a sudden and drastic loss of resources. This loss affects individual resources (e.g., psychological well-being), business resources (e.g., financial resources), and community resources (e.g., social networks). We will explore how aspiring and active entrepreneurs deal with such resource loss and how they build (new) resilience after the crisis. Our project explores the links between adverse life events, resources, resilience, and entrepreneurial behavior in three key target groups: Individuals, firms, and communities. At the individual level, we examine (a) how entrepreneurial behavior emerges from adverse life events and (b) how entrepreneurial behavior in turn contributes to (re)building personal resources and resilience. At the enterprise level, we examine (a) how the resilience of refugee individuals translates into organizational resilience of new ventures and (b) how refugee experiences of team members affect new venture resilience. At the community level, we examine (a) how refugee entrepreneurs use social networks to build entrepreneurial activity and resilience and (b) how government assistance programs help support refugee entrepreneurs.Taken together, the RES²CUE project contributes to a better understanding of the role of entrepreneurship in times of global crisis. The project creates a more comprehensive and nuanced understanding of the links between resources, resilience and entrepreneurship at multiple levels. Using a variety of research methods (quantitative data, qualitative data, and secondary data), we aim to advance an area of research that has been mostly dominated by small-scale qualitative research and case studies. In addition, our research provides much-needed insights into the entrepreneurial behavior of refugees and, more broadly, of people following critical life events.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Co-Investigator: Dr. Lucas Kleine-Stegemann