Systematic Literature Review on Ethnic Minority Entrepreneurship: Citation and Thematic Analysis

Abstract

This paper presents a systematic review of the literature on ethnic minority entrepreneurship. A total of 174 articles converging on ethnic minority entrepreneurship, published between 2010 and 2020, were investigated. This paper extends existing knowledge of the sub-areas in ethnic minority entrepreneurship research by focusing on two different angles. Firstly, Citation analysis was performed to review research papers to recognize and classify the key areas of ethnic minority entrepreneurship currently being focused on and examined by the research community. Secondly, Thematic analysis was executed to discover the specific themes that are being researched. The study found seven different themes: immigrant studies, ethnic entrepreneurial motivations, ethnic startup process, motives of ethnic business success, failure factors of ethnic businesses, ethnic unique challenges, and favourite strong ties of ethnic minorities were identified as main themes. The number of research gaps identified should encourage novel paths and scopes in the ethnic minority entrepreneurship research field to fill these gaps in the literature.

Survival strategies adopted by microbusinesses during COVID-19: an exploration of ethnic minority restaurants in northern Finland

“…All ethnic minority entrepreneurs found the support criteria for accessing the 123 million euros support announced by the Finnish government for the COVID-19 hit restaurant industry, rather tough and unfavorable for microbusinesses such as theirs. Similar findings have been highlighted in some prior studies on similar topics (Sithas and Surangi, 2021; Smallbone et al. , 2003).…”

“…Ethnic minority microenterprises, widely cited in business, management, and marketing fields, are more prone to difficulties accessing finance (see Bruder et al, 2011;Carter et al, 2015;Irwin and Scott, 2010;Ram et al, 2003;Smallbone et al, 2003;Yano and Shiraishi, 2015). Using a ten-year (2010-2020) systematic review of the literature on ethnic minority enterprises covering 174 articles, Sithas and Surangi (2021) addressed critical themes derived from the literature and identified ethnic discrimination as a critical factor hindering ethnic minority enterprises access to finance. Their analysis further revealed that lack of business understanding, language barriers, distrust, poor awareness about law and legislation, and lack of familiarity with the culture of the larger society-are other critical factors that explain ethnic minority enterprises' failure to access finance.…”

Cold grass or hot sands? A comparative study of immigrant Punjabi–Pakistani entrepreneurs in London and Dubai

“…Firstly, the comparison of a single community under multiple national contexts and for comparing a traditional and well studies site (i.e., UK) with an empirically under‐explored area of the United Arab Emirates. Secondly, the qualitative methodological approach (Sitas and Sithas and Surangi (2021) of selecting the same migrant community under a specific immigrant criterion, and strictly controlling the sample group for a clear, purposeful, and transparent comparison of one community operating under similar local contexts (i.e., the ethnic enclave) in each country. Most importantly, the identification of transient and settler mindsets and how such regulatory and institutional structure affects the entrepreneurial process and its pertinence on the type, nature, operations, capitals, and future of such ethnic enterprises.…”

“…The methodological challenges stem from emic‐versus‐etic factors (Usunier, 1998; Vijver & Leung, 1997) such as cultural differences among participants, industry‐specific factors, which vary across nations, and the difficulties in the standardization of research instruments (Crick & Dana, 2007). In a comprehensive systematic literature review, Sithas and Surangi (2021), there are comparatively lesser qualitative studies in comparison with quantitative methods in ethnic entrepreneurship. Although such challenges are foreseeable, such barriers can be minimized by developing a sampling criterion to investigate the same ethnic groups in different countries through the same language, conducting a semi‐structured interview guide with the same key questions as an interview guide, and grounding the study in similar local contexts (i.e., ethnic enclaves to be compared with ethnic enclaves).…”

Discovering ethnic minority business research directions using text mining and topic modelling

“…However, it is essential to highlight that in the EMB context, relationship marketing practices seem more related to cultural practice than management practice (Anwar & Daniel, 2016) (Sithas & Surangi, 2021) and helping to integrate ethnic minorities into the community (Carter et al, 2015), reinforcing trust among partners.…”