Overview

This Open Access book shows how individuals and organizations can turn constraints into strengths and achieve meaningful results. Based on over two decades of research and fieldwork in Japan and Vietnam—covering topics like disability entrepreneurship, student ventures, community rebuilding, and everyday problem-solving—the book presents a micro-level framework connecting cognition, emotion, and action in adversity. It explains how resource “non-recognition” and hidden mismatches can be addressed through steps of appraisal and recombination, enabling people to generate value, resilience, and well-being without waiting for perfect conditions. By combining theory with narrative case studies, the book merges insights from resource-based views with positive psychology to demonstrate how happiness and performance can grow together. Written in an accessible style for general readers while maintaining scholarly rigor, it offers practitioners, students, and researchers practical tools: recognizing hidden resources, avoiding non-resource traps, designing roles and tasks, and fostering positive feedback loops of affect and efficacy. The result is a clear, evidence-based guide to living and working meaningfully within real-world constraints—beneficial for entrepreneurs, managers, educators, and anyone aiming for sustainable progress in resource-limited settings.     This book offers a rigorous and compassionate account of how people act under constraint. It isolates the appraisal–resources–emotions mechanism with rare clarity and shows, through well-chosen cases across settings, how modest shifts in framing can unlock consequential action. The result is a thoughtful, field-ready book that will serve researchers, educators, and policy makers who care about enabling enterprise where resources are tight and hopes are fragile.   Léo-Paul Dana, Professor of Entrepreneurship, Dalhousie University, Canada

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9789819567881

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Author Information

Nguyen Chi Nghia is Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Economics and Management, Tohoku University. His research examines how people and organizations create value under constraints through resource reframing, emotional resilience, and micro-level entrepreneurial behaviors. He has published peer-reviewed articles on disability entrepreneurship, well-being, and social value creation, and has led practice-based projects connecting universities, communities, and small businesses in Japan and Vietnam. His previous books integrate academic rigor with accessible storytelling, emphasizing how everyday problem-solving can yield both societal contribution and personal happiness. In this book, he advances a practical framework that links cognition, emotion, and action to help readers recognize latent resources, avoid nonresource traps, and build sustainable gain spirals in work and life.

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