This paper examines the interaction between culture and immigrant entrepreneurship with reference to London's ethnic minorities. It compares the cultural attributes of different ethnic groups and how those affect their entrepreneurial behaviour. The paper reports and analyses the results of 163 interviews with entrepreneurs from six different immigrant communities in London: Indian, East African Asian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Turkish Cypriot and Turkish. The findings indicate diversity in business entry motives, patterns of start-up finance, the nature of businesses, and the degree of reliance on co-ethnic labour and customers among the different ethnic groups. These may be explained by differences in family background, migration motives, religion, family links, business experience, educational attainment and other factors. The evidence suggests that the interaction between culture and entrepreneurship is stronger in the case of some ethnic groups than others.

Analyses the factors influencing South Asian entrepreneurial expansion in Great Britain and the validity of conventional wisdom which attributes its success to cultural factors. It suggests that entrepreneurial growth depends positively on educational attainment, personal savings invested at start‐up, hard work in the initial stages, and the delegation of responsibilities to non‐family members. Further analysis indicates that later entrants into business gained relevant prior work experience and focused on serving non‐Asian customers, which may have contributed towards their success. The pursuit of constant product and technological improvement and employee training have also influenced growth. There is strong evidence that entrepreneurs with larger‐sized businesses have developed international linkages and focused on one key business area.

The ability to work effectively on a team is highly valued by employers, and collaboration among students can lead to intrinsic motivation, increased persistence, and greater transferability of skills. Moreover, innovation often arises from multidisciplinary teamwork. The influence of personality and ability on undergraduate teamwork and performance is not comprehensively understood. An investigation was undertaken to explore correlations between team outcomes, personality measures and ability in an undergraduate population. Team outcomes included various self-, peer- and instructor ratings of skills, performance, and experience. Personality measures and ability involved the Five-Factor Model personality traits and GPA. Personality, GPA, and teamwork survey data, as well as instructor evaluations were collected from upper division team project courses in engineering, business, political science, and industrial design at a large public university. Characteristics of a multidisciplinary student team project were briefly examined. Personality, in terms of extraversion scores, was positively correlated with instructors’ assessment of team performance in terms of oral and written presentation scores, which is consistent with prior research. Other correlations to instructor-, students’ self- and peer-ratings were revealed and merit further study. The findings in this study can be used to understand important influences on successful teamwork, teamwork instruction and intervention and to understand the design of effective curricula in this area moving forward.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/2193-1801-2-16) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

This paper examines the role of formal and informal institutional support in the expansion of Asian‐owned businesses in Britain, based on a large survey of Asian entrepreneurs based in Britain. More specifically, it investigates the significance of formal (bank) sources of finance relative to that of informal (family or personal) sources of finance at start‐up and the implications of that reliance on subsequent business expansion. The paper also examines the wider role of informal family and community networks in providing access to information and labour, in addition to capital, and the impact of these support networks on business expansion. The methodology used is that of quantitative, statistical analysis supplemented by qualitative survey data. The evidence suggests that both formal and informal institutional support have played a limited role in fostering Asian entrepreneurial expansion in Britain. Although bank finance was valuable in preventing undercapitalised ventures, rapidly growing Asian businesses did not rely on bank finance either at start‐up or for expansion. This may be attributed to the short‐term perspective of banks. Rapidly growing Asian businesses did not rely on formal sources of advice. Nor did they rely on family or community networks for finance or labour. The Asian entrepreneurs who rapidly expanded their businesses invested their personal savings at start‐up, relied on their family and friends for advice, employed non‐Asian labour and invested in employee training. These results imply that Asian entrepreneurs aspiring to grow need to advance beyond the traditional reliance on informal support networks for finance and labour. Formal institutions could offer long‐term debt or equity finance, encourage investment in employee training, and provide appropriate training schemes.

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