Challenges and issues facing ethnic minority small business owners: the Scottish experience

Rahman, MZ, Ullah, F and Thompson, P ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1961-7441, 2018. Challenges and issues facing ethnic minority small business owners: the Scottish experience. The International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, 19 (3), pp. 177-193. ISSN 1465-7503

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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 those starting and running businesses in one such location, the Scottish city of Aberdeen in the UK. 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 (UKBA) immigration rules and tightening of the Post Study Work (PSW) 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.

Item Type:	Journal article
Publication Title:	The International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation
Creators:	Rahman, M.Z., Ullah, F. and Thompson, P.
Publisher:	Sage
Date:	1 August 2018
Volume:	19
Number:	3
ISSN:	1465-7503
Identifiers:	Number Type 10.1177/1465750317753932 DOI 657883 Other
Divisions:	Schools > Nottingham Business School
Record created by:	Linda Sullivan
Date Added:	26 Jan 2018 13:55
Last Modified:	27 Oct 2020 10:53
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/32565

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