No abstract

No abstract

Entrepreneurs have been traditionally epitomized as rugged individuals garnering creative forces of innovation and technology. Applying this traditional, limited, and narrow view of entrepreneurship to ethnic firm creation and growth is to ignore or discount core cultural values of the ethnic contexts in which these firms operate. It is no longer possible to depend solely on human capital theory and household characteristic descriptions to understand the complex and interdependent relationships between the ethnic-owning family, its firm, and the community context in which the firm operates. This paper addresses the complex dynamic of ethnic firms with three purposes: (a) to provide a cultural context for the three ethnic groups composing the National Minority Business Owner Study; (b) to extend the Sustainable Family Business Theory, a dynamic, behaviorally-based, multi-dimensional family firm theory, by clarifying how it accommodates ethnic firm complexities within their cultural context, and (c) to derive implications for research, education and consulting with worldwide applications.

This paper presents U. S. prevalence figures and their relationship to various family business definitions offered in literature to date. The percentage of households that own at least one family business where its owner or manager resides in the residential family/household was 13.8%. Results yielded a 10.0% prevalence rate for households having a business that qualified for this 1997 National Family Business Survey.The level of prevalence was shown to be associated with gender, ownership/management, involvement of family members, and generation of owner. These findings are useful for refining family business definitions. This paper also offers implications for future research, teaching, and practice relative to family businesses.

Family businesses are vital but understudied economic and social units. Previous family business research is limited relative to its definitions, sampling, and resulting empirical evidence. This paper presents an alternative methodological approach to the study of family businesses with the potential for allowing multiperspective and detailed analyses of the nature and internal dynamics of both the family and the business and the interaction between the two.