Challenges and issues facing ethnic minority small business owners

Abstract

<jats:p> Studies investigating the challenges and barriers faced by ethnic minority entrepreneurs have often concentrated on areas where there is a large supportive ethnic minority community. Less work has been conducted on the experience of those entrepreneurs operating in cities where such ethnic resources may be less widely available. Considered from the perspective of mixed embeddedness framework, this study uses face-to-face interviews with 25 ethnic minority entrepreneurs to gain a greater understanding of the constraints experienced by the starting and running businesses in one such location, the Scottish city of Aberdeen in the United Kingdom. Although issues found by previous studies such as access to funding remain an issue, the entrepreneurs indicated problems with access to labour as United Kingdom Border Agency’s immigration rules and tightening of the Post Study Work visa have had a profound effect on these entrepreneurs. The results imply that the weakening of the ethnic resource microsphere has not opened up opportunities which are exploited by the entrepreneurs, but they have still been exposed to external forces from the regulatory macrosphere. Both entrepreneurs and policymakers need to think carefully about the retention, training and recruitment of staff. In particular, the wider ramifications of immigration rule changes need to be considered, but also whether entrepreneurs need to be more open to the potential of recruiting non-ethnic employees and if so what support is required to achieve this. </jats:p>

Immigrant entrepreneurs in rural England – An examination of the socio- cultural barriers facing migrant small businesses in Lincolnshire

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Investments in managerial human capital: Explanations from prospect and regulatory focus theories

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The Policy Paradox: Bridging the Gap Between Ethnic Entrepreneurship and Immigrant Integration Policies

“…EEs are often said to have relatively limited resources and capabilities compared to their nativeborn counterparts (Williams et al, 2017). Their major constraints are access to finance, markets and management (Carter et al, 2013;Desiderio, 2014;Rahman et al, 2018;Shelton and Minniti, 2018).…”