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Challenges and Issues facing Ethnic Minority Small Business Owners: The Scottish experience

Ullah, Farid
; 
Rahman, Zillur
; 
Thompson, Piers
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Affiliation
University of Chester
EPub Date
Publication Date
2018-01-23
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Chester Business School
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Abstract
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.
Citation
Zillur, R., Ullah, F. & Thompson, P. (2018). Challenges and Issues facing Ethnic Minority Small Business Owners: The Scottish experience. The International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, 19(3), 177-193
Publisher
SAGE Publications
Journal
The International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation
Research Unit
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10034/622076
DOI
10.1177/1465750317753932
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PubMed Central ID
Type
Article
Language
en
Description
Series/Report no.
ISSN
1465-7503
EISSN
2043-6882
ISBN
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https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1465750317753932