Asians in the UK: gender, generations and enterprise

Abstract

Methodology and ApproachA small-scale qualitative study was undertaken with interviews of five men and five women entrepreneurs of the second generation. The issues explored included their background, the factors that have influenced, facilitated or inhibited their decision to become self-employed, their experiences of entrepreneurship and the particular issues that confronted them.Female entrepreneurs in the sample were older and felt inhibited and more constrained than their male counterparts in their freedom to act. FindingsBoth males and females of second generation entered business through attraction for the opportunities rather than as their only option in an unknown environment.Notwithstanding expectations, later generations did not enter activities adding much greater value than those of the first generation, even though they were better integrated with their environment. Boundary stresses between first and second generation are likely to lead to further studies of succession planning and of the influence of culture and gender on attitudes to enterprise. Orginality and value of paper.Methodologically the study is novel in so far as the researcher (an Asian female from a "typical" family business background) has taken care to observe the cultural proprieties often noted within this particular group. Hence, the data are arguably more authentic than previous studies undertaken by "distant" researchers.

Networks in family business: a multi-rational approach

“…There is substantial cross-over between those researchers who set out to study networks in a business context and those who set out to explore the reasons for higher levels of apparent entrepreneurship within certain minority ethnic communities (Ram 1994;Ram and Jones 1998;Dhaliwal 2000;Levent et al 2003;Dhaliwal and Kangis 2006). Where Dhaliwal (2000) writes of the 'hidden women' in Asian businesses in the UK, there is an element of cultural specificity.…”

“…If defining a family business is complex and partially reliant on self-definition, the definition of a business family is even less clear within the literature, but the term has been used in relation to enterprise development in a variety of communities (Dhaliwal 2000;Kenyon-Rouvinez 2001;Dhaliwal and Kangis 2006) to refer to families with a range of businesses and a track record in business start-up, development and on occasion sale. The idea that a family business may develop a vision which encompasses a variety of business interests operating for the benefit of the family, extends the principle of multiple rationalities and offers an overarching framework encompassing literature focusing on family businesses, business families and new business development where it is supported by a family.…”

Family embeddedness and entrepreneurship experience: a study of Indian migrant women entrepreneurs in Australia

“…A significant body of research on immigrant entrepreneurs has identified culture as one of the main forms of capital for entrepreneurs (Watts et al 2007;Sabah, Carsrud, and Kocak 2014). the cultural resources have been identified by past research as both enablers and obstacles for MWEs (Dhaliwal and Kangis 2006;pécoud 2010;Azmat 2013;Huggins and thompson 2014). For example, some authors have indicated that ethnic minority businesses capitalize on cultural characteristics such as their social capital, linguistic skills, cultural knowledge and ethnic contacts to gain a competitive advantage (Kupferberg 2003;Dhaliwal and Kangis 2006;verduijn and Essers 2013).…”

“…the cultural resources have been identified by past research as both enablers and obstacles for MWEs (Dhaliwal and Kangis 2006;pécoud 2010;Azmat 2013;Huggins and thompson 2014). For example, some authors have indicated that ethnic minority businesses capitalize on cultural characteristics such as their social capital, linguistic skills, cultural knowledge and ethnic contacts to gain a competitive advantage (Kupferberg 2003;Dhaliwal and Kangis 2006;verduijn and Essers 2013). On the contrary, some argue that racial, linguistic, religious and cultural differences act as an artificial wall immigrants need to break through before they can enter the mainstream labour market (Ensign and Robinson 2011).…”

“…Indian immigrant entrepreneurs have been researched as an ethnic group as a result of their increasing emigration to countries such as Australia, Canada and the U.S. (Basu 1998;Dhaliwal and Kangis 2006;pio 2007;de vries 2007;Clark and Drinkwater 2010). Existing research in the context of Australia has provided useful insights into the obstacles faced by entrepreneurs with recognition of their overseas qualifications (Constance et al 1991), the blocked mobility faced by Asian entrepreneurs (Stromback and Malhotra 1994) and how Asian women migrant entrepreneurs' linguistic and cultural backgrounds, as well as racism and sexism, impact their entrepreneurial experiences (Collins and Low 2010;Chiang, Low, and Collins 2013).…”