Ethnic minority business in comparative perspective ...

Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies

ISSN: 1369-183X (Print) 1469-9451 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cjms20

Ethnic minority business in comparative perspective: The case of the independent restaurant sector Monder Ram , Balihar Sanghera , Tahir Abbas , Gerald Barlow & Trevor Jones To cite this article: Monder Ram , Balihar Sanghera , Tahir Abbas , Gerald Barlow & Trevor Jones (2000) Ethnic minority business in comparative perspective: The case of the independent restaurant sector, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 26:3, 495-510, DOI: 10.1080/713680492 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/713680492

Published online: 04 Aug 2010.

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Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies Vol. 26, No. 3: 495± 510

July 2000

Ethnic minority business in comparative perspective: the case of the independent restaurant sector

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Monder Ram, Balihar Sanghera, Tahir Abbas, Gerald Barlow and Trevor Jones Abstract British research on ethnic minority entrepreneurship has often endeavoured to account for the prominence or otherwise of ethnic minority groups in business. This trend towards explicating the diversity of ethnic minorities in business has intensi® ed with recent attention to apparently signi® cant variations within the South Asian community itself. But how `different’ is ethnic minority business activity from the wider small ® rm population? This question is addressed through a qualitative study of a variety of ethnic groups involved in Birmingham’s independent restaurant sector. In this article we examine two processes that have been marked out for particular attention in debates on ethnic minority business activity: the role of the family in the process of business formation and management of the enterprise, and the dynamics of `workforce construction’; that is, the `qualities’ that employers look for in recruiting workers. The results highlight the interplay of culture and economics at work. In so doing, they serve to bring into question `solidaristic’ notions of ethnicity, that attach primary importance to `culturalist’ explanations of ethnic minority business development. It is argued that accounts of the apparent distinctiveness of ethnic minority businesses need to be more carefully embedded in the sectoral context in which they operate. Further, qualitative approaches are more likely to capture the connection between culture and economics in action than quantitatively-based survey assessments. K EYWORDS: ETHNIC MINORITY BUSINESS; SOUTH ASIANS; BRITAIN Over the past two decades studies of ethnic minority businesses have tended to reproduce a long-held and rather divisive belief that African-Caribbean and South Asian communities are set on widely contrasting paths of insertion into British society (Patterson 1969; Peach 1996). Evidence accumulates for the entrepreneurial success of South Asians, richly equipped as they are with entrepreneurial values, human capital and communal/familial support (Bains 1988; Basu 1995; Metcalf et al. 1996; Soar 1991; Soni et al. 1987; Ward 1991; Werbner 1984; 1990); these èthnic’ resources appear to have elevated them to a self-employment rate well in excess of the indigenous white population (Ram and Jones 1998). This closely replicates what Huhr and Kim (1989: 512) have called the `success stereotype of Asian-Americans’, in this case mainly Chinese, Japanese and Koreans. On the ¯ ip side of this stereotype, African-Caribbeans languish well below the national self-employment rate, a lag widely attributed to de® ciencies in these ethnic resources (Kazuka 1980; Soar 1991; Ward 1987, 1991). This trend towards differentiating ethnic minorities in business has intensi® ed with recent attention to apparently signi® cant variations within the South Asian community itself (Metcalf et al. 1996). But how `different’ is ethnic minority business activity from the wider small ISSN 1369-183X print/ISSN 1469± 9451 online/00/030495-1 6 Ó Carfax Publishing

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® rm population? Moreover, how different is one ethnic minority community from another in its actual business practices? This issue is addressed through a qualitative exploration of Birmingham’s independent restaurant sector. The present article is distinctive in three respects. First, the experiences of a variety of ethnic communities are examined. These include African-Caribbean, Bangladeshi, Indian, Pakistani and ± importantly ± white groups. This comparative orientation militates against the danger of overplaying differences. Second, the study is based upon an examination of the independent restaurant sector in Birmingham, England. The emphasis upon multi-ethnic involvement in a speci® c sector is rare within the extant literature, yet it is crucial if the pitfall of identifying supposedly èthnic’ features, which are often more accurate expressions of sectoral processes, is to be avoided. Finally, in contrast to the quantitative approach characteristic of the ® eld (Aldrich et al. 1981; Metcalf et al. 1996), the study examines business processes in more qualitative fashion. This ìntensive’ research approach allows for the scrutiny of the variety of factors that shape small business practices, and importantly, of the context in which these take place.

Ethnic divergence, business convergence? From the moment that the American scholar Ivan Light ® rst put the ethnic minority entrepreneur on the academic map (Light 1972), researchers in this new ® eld were forced to confront a major anomaly: how is it that otherwise disadvantaged racialised minorities such as South Asians in Britain or Koreans in the USA can achieve such a high pro® le in the demanding sphere of business ownership? In accounting for this phenomenon, considerable emphasis has been accorded to what Jones et al. (1997: 2) have rather sardonically called the `Big Idea’ of ethnic business studies: the notion that culture can somehow override material circumstances so as to create a complete socioeconomic role reversal. In essence, the theory argues that the cultural attributes of certain (but by no means all) ethnic minority groups are in themselves conducive to entrepreneurial activity. Britain’s South Asian communities are usually presented as exemplars. Self-employment is reputed to be held in high esteem; especially for the independence and status it confers (Basu 1995; Soni et al. 1987, Srinivasan 1995). Sometimes this is attributed to a traditional religious ethos (Helweg 1986, Werbner 1984). On other occasions, it is treated as a carry-over of rural values into an urban context (Bains 1988). Similarly, hard work, thrift and self-discipline are often regarded as intrinsically `South Asian’ values (Werbner 1984), a surprisingly unremarked shift from a Protestant to a Hindu± Sikh± Muslim work ethic. However, such `culturalist’ explanations have increasingly been challenged by accounts that attach greater explanatory weight to the often hostile opportunity structure in which many South Asians have to operate (Barrett et al. 1996; Brah 1996; Jones et al. 1992, 2000; Phizacklea 1990). Both in Britain and elsewhere the trend has been increasingly towards an ìnteractionist’ approach (Razin and Light 1998: 333), that stresses the interplay between internal group resource endowments and the external opportunity structure (Jones et al. 1992). In essence, what Jenkins (1986) refers to as the `culture model’ of ethnic entrepreneurship underestimates the impact that racial discrimination in all its forms may have on the development of ethnic groupings and the reliance on


The ethnic minority restaurant sector

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`community’ resources for survival. Moreover, it also ignores the formidable competitive pressures exerted by the giant corporations on such sectors as low order retailing in which ethnic entrepreneurs are disproportionately concentrated (Jones et al. 1992, 2000). Judging by recent trends in the international literature, it seems that ethnic entrepreneurialism is likely to be increasingly, and more appropriately, contextualised in terms of its economic, political, institutional and spatial environment (Freeman and Ogelman 2000; Jones et al. 2000; Light 2000; Light and Bonacich 1988; Razin and Light 1998). This avoids the danger of reducing ìmmigrant entrepreneurship to an ethno-cultural phenomenon’ (Rath and Kloosterman 2000: 1; see also Rath 1993). Nonetheless, the tendency to ascribe entrepreneurial qualities to particular ethnicities also proceeds unabated and continues (unintentionally, no doubt) to reproduce simplistic comparisons between South Asians and AfricanCaribbeans, Britain’s other great migrant-origin population. From Patterson (1969) to Peach (1996), explanations have pointed to the apparent lack of cultural endowments that appear to be present in other ethnic minority groups. They include: the different value base of the African-Caribbean family unit, which apparently does not pre-dispose them to running a family business (Reeves and Ward 1984); the legacy of slavery, which had such a deleterious effect upon African-Caribbean culture (Rex 1982); and the absence of extended family and community networks (Blaschke et al. 1990). Other observers, however, have been more mindful of the need to locate African-Caribbean under-representation in the socioeconomic context of `black’ people in Britain (Basu 1991; Jones et al. 1992; Ram and Jones 1998). Recent studies have intensi® ed this particularism still further by focusing on the differences in the South Asian community itself (Basu 1995; 1998; Metcalf et al. 1996). For example, Metcalf et al. (1996) offer evidence of differences in cultural and economic factors affecting entry into self-employment, development of the businesses and satisfaction with self-employment. It appears that East African Asians and Indians are the real South Asian entrepreneurial `success’ stories while, conversely, Pakistani and Bangladeshi enterprise seems still to arise out of a context of disadvantage. Indians are reputed to have a `greater business orientation’, tending to enter self-employment for `positive reasons’, and are able to draw upon ample ® nancial support and labour power from family and community. Pakistanis are more likely to start businesses as an èscape from poor employment prospects and racism in the labour market’ (1996: 4). Underfunded and poorly resourced, they have been much less successful than their Indian counterparts in what for them is allegedly an occupation of the last resort. At the most basic level, Indians have a higher self-employment rate than Pakistanis and are more likely to employ workers (Metcalf et al. 1996; Ra® q 1992). The prevailing trend to divine differences in the manner in which ethnic minorities conduct their businesses can be challenged on a number of fronts. First, the tendency to focus on a single ethnic group in isolation from the wider small business population can accentuate perceived differences (Jones et al. 1992; Mulholland 1997; Zimmer and Aldrich 1987). As Zimmer and Aldrich (1987: 422) note, `the comparative study of immigrants and native groups shifts the focus from group differences to group similarities. Studies examining only immigrants may ® nd apparently distinctive characteristics, but in fact many traits are common to all small business owners’. In her study of 70 `successful’ business


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families from white and ethnic minority communities, Mulholland (1997) found that business behaviour in family ® rms had many similarities; moreover, it had kinship and class roots rather than a speci® c ethnic identi® cation. In a similar vein, Jones et al. (1992) found many highly signi® cant commonalities between African-Caribbean, South Asian and white small ® rm owners in their national study of ethnic minority business activity. A second problem inherent in comparing ethnic minorities in business is the dif® culty of disentangling sectoral processes from supposedly ethnic-speci® c `characteristics’. In the broader small ® rms’ literature, the dangers of treating small businesses as a homogeneous grouping are well known (Curran et al. 1991). The importance of economic sector in shaping social relations in the small ® rm has been noted in areas as diverse as ® nance (Curran and Blackburn 1993), employment relations (Scase 1995) and enterprise support (North et al. 1997). Yet recent studies differentiating South Asian business activity seem to have underplayed or even completely ignored the in¯ uence of sector (Basu 1998; Metcalf et al. 1996); and when sectoral comparisons are taken into account, inter-communal differences are often less acute than imagined. For example, while Jones et al. (1994) con® rm the existing wisdom that South Asian owners work signi® cantly longer hours than others, it was found to be largely due to the overwhelming concentration of South Asian ® rms in labour-intensive sectors like food retailing and confectionery, tobacco and newsagents (CTN). In addition to all this, the quantitative orientation of many of the studies comparing ethnic minority business activity (Aldrich et al. 1981; Basu 1998; Metcalf et al. 1996; Soni et al. 1987) can also be problematic. Whilst the use of a highly structured questionnaire comprising standard statements undoubtedly eases the process of categorisation, often little scope is left for a nuanced and contextualised understanding of responses. Similarly structured approaches have often been used within the general small ® rms’ literature to explore issues such as entrepreneurial motivation, attitudes, performance and growth. A frequent criticism is their tendency to òver-compress’ potentially complex and contradictory views, and the limited extent to which they explore meanings in context (Curran et al. 1991). Take the importance of the family to the ethnic minority ® rm as an example. The characterisation of Indian-owned ® rms as family concerns in the Metcalf et al. (1996: 67) study reveals little of how the family is actually deployed in the ® rm or indeed why. More qualitatively-orientated studies have highlighted the general importance of the `family’ to the management of the ® rm (Mulholland 1997); the differential nature of gender relations that operate behind the label of the `family business’ (Fletcher 1997; Baines and Wheelock 1998); and the importance of familial ideology as a means of employer control (Holliday 1995).

Researching restaurants The choice of the catering sector as a vehicle for the study of ethnic minority business activity is deliberately focused. Catering represents one of the classic `niches’ traditionally occupied by ethnic minority enterprise and is clearly an area where cultural identity is of the utmost operational importance, with caterers offering their own unique national-regional foods to a wider public, a strategy labelled èxoticism’ by Kesteloot and Mistiaen (1997: 326). In a very real sense, èxoticised’ catering offers the ultimate ethnic monopoly, since only West



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Indians can credibly aspire to run Caribbean restaurants and only South Asians `curry’ and `Balti’ houses (Jones et al. 2000). Most ironically, one of the white respondents in our survey felt himself disadvantaged through not being South Asian, Ì think it would be a lot easier for me if I was an ethnic minority in a way’, so pervasive is the grip of Ìndian curry’ on the national taste buds. However, for the purpose of the current research, it is important to note that the focus is upon the process of production in restaurants owned by members of ethnic minorities (speci® cally, the role of the family in business formation and management, and workforce construction), rather than on consumption. The symbolic importance of eating out to different groups of consumers is a subject of growing interest (Caplan 1995; Martens and Warde 1995; Miller 1997; Warde 1997). Particular themes within these discussions are the factors that encourage the specialist use of ethnic restaurants (Warde et al. 1997), and the changing nature of `British’ food (James 1995). Such debates concentrate upon the extent to which ethnicity is relevant in food choice, whereas the emphasis here is on the signi® cance of ethnicity to business processes within the ® rm. Nonetheless, it is still necessary to have an appreciation of broader trends in the restaurant and ethnic food sectors to understand the context of ® rms in the current research. Trends in the restaurant and ethnic food sectors There is a long-term trend for consumers to spend more on eating out which has continued in recent years. Turnover in the British restaurant market (eating and takeaways) reached £11.71 billion in 1996. This was an increase of 5.1 per cent at current prices on the previous year. Year-on-year sales increases have been achieved in recent years as the popularity of eating out has increased and a wider choice of outlets and menus has been made available to consumers. It is estimated that the restaurant market is likely to rise to £15.11 billion by 2001 (Mintel 1997a). The ethnic restaurant market enjoyed a period of growth from the mid-1970s to 1991. However, this sector was hard hit by the economic recession in the early 1990s, and has been slow to recover. In 1997, the market was valued at around £3 billion; between 1992 and 1997, it suffered a decline in real value terms of 6 per cent. The Indian, Bengali and Pakistani restaurant sector dominates the UK ethnic market, accounting for 55 per cent of the total (Mintel 1998). Precise ® gures of Caribbean restaurant ® rms are not recorded, but nationally, they are thought to be few in number (Mintel 1999). Ethnic restaurants have been increasingly vulnerable to competition from other forms of eating out. More traditional forms of food, such as ® sh and chips and hamburgers, often compete for business from the same group of young takeaway consumers; and pubs and chain restaurants are able to compete on price with many ethnic eat-in restaurants. Competition from such outlets increased by 27 per cent between 1993 and 1997 (Mintel 1998). Accurate ® gures on Birmingham’s ethnic restaurants are not available, but nonetheless, these broad sectoral trends were discernible in employers’ assessments of their market environment. Most identi® ed the intensi® cation of competition as the main factor impinging upon their business. This manifested itself in three different ways. First, there was competition for the same trade in the immediate locality. Many felt that the number of restaurants in the area had proliferated to such an extent that owners were said to be, in the words of one respondent, àt each

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others’ throats’. Second, there was competition from `non-ethnic’ restaurants offering related and similar products. For example, one respondent claimed that local `® sh and chip’ shops were providing traditional `Balti’ starters, thereby diminishing their customer base. Finally, there was competition from other types of outlets in the èating out’ market that affected the social patterns of eating out. For instance, a second-generation Pakistani restaurant owner noted that the younger generation was much more likely to be found in McDonald’s or Pizzaland. Such outlets contributed to the intensely competitive environment that the owners operated in. Similarly, a white respondent remarked:


The big (chains) like the Beefeaters and the branded restaurants, and franchised restaurants (provide) probably even more competition now because they are usually disguised as a one-off place but they are franchised, that type of place, probably worse for us now.

In addition to the market environment, the city of Birmingham also provides an important setting for the study. With a very considerable ethnic minority population (21.5 per cent), the city is seen as a signi® cant, `test case for the future of race relations in British society’ (Back and Solomos 1992: 329). Of this ethnic minority population, South Asians represent a substantial component with Bangladeshis comprising 1.3 per cent of the city’s population, Indians 5.3 per cent, and Pakistanis 6.9 per cent (BEIC 1992). Settling in mainly from the late 1950s to the early 1970s, Birmingham’s ethnic communities have tended to form distinct spatial clusters; `Sparkbrook became a largely Pakistani area, the Handsworth area became the Caribbean centre of Birmingham, alongside the Soho area which was overwhelmingly Indian’ (Rex 1987: 104). Despite their signi® cant presence, Birmingham’s ethnic minorities did not make up the bulk of the clientele of the 37 restaurants in the study. Ten outlets (eight Pakistani and two Indian) were located in the `Balti Quarter’, the local name for a high concentration of South Asian restaurants in the Sparkbrook and Sparkhill area. The customer base for these restaurants was predominantly made up of white students and young professionals. All eight Bangladeshiowned restaurants, and three with Indian proprietors, were geographically dispersed; they presented themselves as ùp-market’ establishments with a largely (white) `middle-aged and middle-class’ clientele. A similar situation pertained with respect to the white-owned restaurants. Most of the AfricanCaribbean outlets were `neighbourhood kitchens’ providing affordable food for the local community (Mintel 1999); they tended to have a more signi® cant co-ethnic customer base. Two small Indian `sweet centres’ also operated in this way. Interviews with business owners Designed to shed further light on the in¯ uence or otherwise of ethnic speci® city, the current research is based on detailed qualitative interviews with restaurant owners and takeaway food-sellers from ® ve distinct origins: Bangladeshi, Pakistani and white (eight each), Indian (seven) and African-Caribbean (six). These ® ve origins represent those groups on which the bulk of previous work in the ® eld has been directed and hence allow examination of standard assumptions about inter-ethnic variations in business. Each interview, which usually lasted between 90 minutes and two hours, was tape-recorded, fully transcribed and analysed using scienti® c computer software.



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During the course of the interviews, a number of issues were discussed relating to the owner’s business, family involvement, supplier relationships, links with enterprise support agencies and planning regulations. However, for the purposes of this article, the emphasis is upon two issues: the role of the family members in the launching and subsequent management of the enterprise; and employee recruitment ± two processes often seen as distinctive within the ethnic minority ® rm. It is not suggested here that the experiences of 37 ethnic minority small business owners will be representative of the population as a whole or even of ethnic minority involvement in other sectors. The purpose of qualitatively-oriented research of the kind reported on here is not necessarily to adhere to statistical notions of representation. Of more importance is the need to understand the signi® cance of processes in action (Watson 1994; Yin 1994). Accordingly, the following sections focus upon the processes of business start-up, management, and recruitment.

Business formation: the role of the family Undoubtedly the advantage derived by ethnic business from family support is one of the most reiterated claims in the ® eld. There can be little doubt that family support, especially in the provision of ® nance and cheap labour power, often acts as a spur to new business activity; South Asian groups appear to possess this resource in abundance. Despite the persistence of this view, Jones et al. (1994) ® nd less of a gap between the role of family members in South Asian ® rms and others than previously supposed. Broadly in line with this, the current research con® rms the importance of family support to the initiation of the enterprise. Yet, in contrast to many previous studies, we ® nd that this is far from an exclusive South Asian trait, virtually all respondents irrespective of ethnic group mentioned it. Were South Asians themselves to be taken in isolation, it would of course be highly tempting to conclude that their ® rms are uniquely privileged, as the following broadly representative quote from a secondgeneration Bangladeshi restaurateur suggests: Yes, our business is very much family for a number of simple reasons. I think ® nancially you get help from them, physically you get help from them and morally, ¼ it is support in everything. I think if you were just somebody working on their own it would be a dif® cult set-up

Here the launch of this respondent’s ® rm has depended heavily on family members as providers of capital, labour and less tangible assets such as moral support. Revealingly, however, this model of the family ® rm turns out to be by no means ethnic-speci® c and indeed is replicated right across the board, even including African-Caribbeans whose stereotype deems them to be crucially impoverished in respect of family resources. To take one case, the parents of an African-Caribbean restaurateur provided her with a £10,000 loan; two brothers used their skills to ® t out the premises; the mother and aunt helped with the preparation of food, and nieces were relied upon to wait at tables. She commented: My mom ¼ was a big help to start with and still is; she was involved from the beginning. She did most of the cooking and at one time one of my sisters worked with me full-time, and the rest of the family would help out when I had got to take a holiday or a weekend off or whatever, they would come in and help. So basically all the family have helped out some time or other.


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Equally illuminating are the white owner case histories, which question any notion that family entrepreneurial support is somehow the preserve of the traditionalist practices of ethnic minority groups. One of the white respondents explained that his wife’s income was crucial to starting the business and ensuring that it was viable during the early stages of trading. It was vital for, `paying the mortgage on the house’, other family members provided help with building work before the opening of the business. In this and in other South Asian and African-Caribbean cases also, family members have acted as a kind of task force, a temporary but vital contribution to the preparation and launching of the restaurant. This kind of input tends to be dif® cult to detect in conventional quantitative studies, simply because the task force is unlikely to be present at the time of interview. If this type of input is added to other contributions ± funding, work and moral support ± the role of family members in business formation can be seen as pivotal in a great many cases. Yet, this is important within all ethnic groups; the ® ndings highlight a high degree of inter-group convergence and of common practice within the small business community irrespective of its members’ origins.

Managing the ® rm: the role of the family Having established the universal signi® cance of the family in helping to facilitate business formation, how important is the `family’ in the day-to-day running of the enterprise? This is another area in which South Asian-owned ® rms are singled out as exemplars of the `family business’ (Ward 1991; Werbner 1984), while yet again African-Caribbean enterprise is portrayed as having comparatively little access to family support (Reeves and Ward 1984; Ward 1987, 1991). Most respondents in the current research reported signi® cant assistance by the family in the work of the restaurant. However, the family members involved in the businesses varied between ethnic groups. In the case of white, AfricanCaribbean and many of the Indian-owned ® rms, husbands and wives tended to play an active role in the running of the enterprise. Often this involvement was informal and unpaid; and it was not uncommon for (in most cases) wives to assist whilst engaged in full-time employment. A white respondent commented on the role of his partner in the restaurant: Alice works here. She is a social worker and then she comes in on night-time. She works a couple of shifts, evenings and Saturday lunch, so she works a lot of hours and she does a full-time job and then she does a part-time job here as well.

South Asians ® rms in the sample, particularly Pakistanis and to a lesser extent Bangladeshis, tended to use family labour in a more direct manner than other restaurants. Indeed, 12 of the 17 South Asian Muslim businesses were `second generation’ ± owned and managed; usually, the running of the business had been transferred from father to son. One Pakistani restaurateur described how he used to help his father, `clear the tables’, when he was growing up in the early 1970s; he joined the business full-time in 1984 with his two other brothers. He stated: Well it was my father, my father, just my father, see, my father didn’t want us to do separate working, so he pulled us all back together, saw the restaurants here and bought this, spent so much on this one and bought this one for us to run it. We have always been


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a team; okay, we have done occasionally, stuff on the side, we have all worked, but we have always lived together and we will always stay together.


Despite the recurrent theme of cross-ethnic convergence in our ® ndings, clear differences emerge in some areas. This is perhaps most evident in respect of the role of female family members, where South Asian Muslim ® rms are sharply distinguished from the others (Sikh, Hindu and non-South Asian) by the almost total absence of wives in the work of the restaurants. Not unexpectedly, `religio-cultural’ reasons for the absence of South Asian Muslim women’s formal participation in the business were discernible in responses from some of the Bangladeshi and Pakistanis owners. A ® rst-generation Bangladeshi restaurateur stated: She (has been) a housewife all the time. Most of the restaurateurs’ wives have never worked and are housewives. This is common in the Bangladeshi community ¼ We as a family and community-wise, we do not like our wives to work. That’s how the family goes.

This ® nding seems to concur with Metcalf et al. (1996) on the matter of women’s involvement in the family business. They found that four-® fths of Indians compared to only two-® fths of Pakistanis agreed that wives should work in the family business if they wanted; indeed, most Pakistani respondents objected to married women performing any paid work (1996: 34). A number of points emerge from this section. First, the family is an important source of paid and unpaid labour for many of the restaurateurs. For the African-Caribbean and white restaurateurs, this labour was drawn upon at critical junctures in the life of the business (for example, the start-up phase), and more sporadically in the day-to-day activities of the enterprise. This point was made forcibly by an African-Caribbean respondent: I would say that it wouldn’t have happened if it didn’t have the support of the family. It wouldn’t have happened. But I don’t think it’s got any direct impact on the way the business is run. No different to any other business which is a family concern really.

Second, the more direct involvement of South Asian family members seems to suggest that the enterprise was an important vehicle for family employment (Metcalf et al. 1996). However, this was not necessarily inspired by a concern for `family solidarity’. Rather, many South Asian respondents maintained that the business was a `safety net’ for children who did not perform well educationally, or were unable to secure rewarding full-time employment. As one Pakistani owner remarked, `He (the son) was threatened with the business if he did not do well at school’, which in itself suggests that there is no automatic assumption among South Asians that the ® rm should be passed on inter-generationally. There are other perceived options, notably `professional’ careers (Peach 1996). Finally, the use of labour power in the ® rms was clearly gendered. Female family members tended to undertake vital tasks, which were often unacknowledged. This was common across ethnic groups. South Asian Muslim women were consigned to more domestic `hidden’ roles outside of the business, ostensibly for `religio-cultural reasons’. However, exclusively `culturalist’ explanations are unlikely to account fully for the absence of women in the enterprise. As Brah and Shaw (1992) point out, it is also important to consider the later migration of Muslim women from Pakistan and Bangladesh compared with Hindu and Sikh women from India; the structure of local labour markets; and the socioeconomic position of women prior to migration.

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Workforce construction Here we move beyond the family itself and turn to the questions of why and how non-family workers are recruited. This was an important feature of the current research since the average number of full-time workers employed in each ® rm was ® ve, thus exceeding the average for the sector (Mintel 1997b). The recruitment of co-ethnic workers is a widely reported feature of ethnic minority ® rms. Co-ethnic employees are often deemed to be more `trustworthy’ than other employees; and this eases the employer imperative of labour control (Ward 1991). Ethnic minority involvement in the restaurant sector has often been explained in this manner. For example, Bailey (1985) maintains that the mobilisation of family, ethnic, and social ties is a `fundamental aspect’ of the functioning of immigrant-owned restaurants in New York, èven when the workforce extends beyond the family to other immigrants, the owners and employees often accept a set of obligations that are characteristic of a family enterprise’ (1985: 214). In Toronto, Greek and Macedonian-owned restaurant owners preferred to employ co-ethnics because they were cheap and could be `trusted’ (Herman 1979). Kesteloot and Mistiaen (1997) report a similar situation in the case of Turkish restaurant-owners in Brussels. Ethnic ties, therefore, appear to be an important feature of recruitment in ethnic minority-owned restaurants. However, it is doubtful if their signi® cance can be assessed without an appreciation of the range of considerations that shape employers’ choice of workers. As Jenkins (1986) in particular has shown, employers seek workers who are `suitable’, that is, able to expedite the technical requirements of the job, as well as àcceptable’ in the sense of being able to ® t into the prevailing pattern of social relations in the workplace. Kitching (1994) draws upon Jenkins’s framework in his elaboration of a `workforce construction’ approach to the recruitment process in small enterprises. Accordingly, employers’ choice of workers is contingent upon a number of inter-related requirements, including the aforementioned technical skills; non-speci® c job attributes consistent with acceptable behaviour in the workplace; time, particularly when demand for labour is variable; and labour supply factors. When such an approach is adopted, the recruitment of workers to ethnic minority ® rms is clearly more complex than a simple invocation of ethnic ties. Rather, it rests upon the complex array of in¯ uences that shape the labour process, as well as workers’ ethnic backgrounds. This becomes evident when restaurateur views on the recruitment of workers in the current study are examined. For example, the head `chef’ was usually the most `skilled’ position in the restaurants. In most cases, they were of the same ethnic origin as the proprietor. This was justi® ed on the grounds of their mastery of àuthentic’ food, as an Indian owner remarked, Ì’m a ® rm believer that if you want typical Punjabi food, you need Punjabi people’. Similarly, an African-Caribbean restaurateur commented: I am inclined to employ Jamaican s or children from Jamaican descent, although if it was a teenager of Trinidadian descent ¼ they could be trained to cook West Indian food.

However, given the importance of the chef to the production process, technical expertise and the capacity to prepare àuthentic’ food were not the only criteria that were important. Employers needed to ensure that chefs would


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remain with the ® rm. A Bangladeshi restaurateur described the importance of the chef to the labour process: The head chef is responsible for everything, of all kitchen workers. He is the main person. He runs the kitchen. He makes sure that the quality of food is good and all are learning from him. But once head chefs get fed up then increasingly all restaurateurs will have problems in replacing them.


One owner typifying the norm attempted to ensure that newly-recruited chefs (who were brought over from India) would remain with the ® rm by making them `dependent’ upon him: They’re very highly trained. To keep them ¼ that many years you have to ¼ meet all their demands. Initially, when we brought them here, we would pay for everything A-Z. ¼ But they were on low salaries ¼ Once they complete their initial contract of three years ¼ they go up to a proper salary ¼ I mean they were actually dependent on us, let’s put it that way.

The kitchen area was usually a site of frequent activity in which rushed orders were issued, a variety of culinary tasks were performed simultaneously by different people, and employees from head chefs to porters attempted to expedite their separate yet interdependent tasks. For many South Asian owners, this justi® ed the recruitment of co-ethnic workers for the kitchen area. One Bangladeshi owner who employed predominantly Bangladeshi workers commented: The problem is different culture, different attitudes, and different language. There is language problem in the kitchen ¼ when people don’t learn different languages. At the front it is different ± waiters learn a little English ¼ so that they can survive. In the kitchen people cannot work with other community people who speak in different languages.

Informal discussions with employers and workers revealed the insecure and transient nature of this type of work. Many were reputed to be working òff-the-books’. It was not uncommon for ® rst-generation immigrants who were struggling to ® nd any type of employment to be engaged in these tasks. This type of insecure and highly dependent employment relationship is reported to be pervasive in the ethnic minority-owned restaurant sector (Bailey 1985; Herman 1979; Kesteloot and Mistianen 1997). The other main category of employee in the sample was waiting staff. A greater mix of ethnicities was to be found amongst waiting staff in the restaurant. Nonetheless, there was a predominance of Bangladeshi waiters employed in the South Asian restaurants (but less so for Pakistanis, who were more reliant on direct co-ethnics). This was due, in the words of one respondent, to `plenty of Bangladeshi workers being available’. Indeed, 60 per cent of all Bangladeshi working-age males are employed in the catering sector (Sly et al. 1998: 608). To this end, another restaurateur commented: Mostly Bangladeshi workers are hard workers and honest workers and trustworthy. That is why we prefer to employ Bangladeshis. And mostly, the Bangladeshi community is already here. The Bangladeshis come with their family, and those people born and brought here will come to help starting to cook and waiting. And, we didn’t have a chance to get education and so had to work in restaurants and factories.

Co-ethnic recruitment is clearly a more complex and multi-faceted process than commonly portrayed. The ethnic background of workers is important; but it cannot be detached from other qualities and factors within the labour process. Employers’ attempts at workforce construction means that it is the social

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relations of production and the mediated impact of èxternal’ factors that will ùltimately shape and underpin the existing structure of employment, the job opportunities available to particular groups within the labour market, and the path and development of industrial relations in particular companies’ (Nolan 1983: 309). Hence, the signi® cance of ethnicity needs to be evaluated in the light of these basic work processes rather than isolated as a particular `variable’ in the recruitment decision.


Conclusion This article has considered whether widely-alleged entrepreneurial differences between ethnic communities have permeated through to concrete areas of business activity within ethnic minority ® rms operating in the independent restaurant sector (a setting which appears to provide considerable scope for ethno-cultural in¯ uences to shape business practices). It has attempted to avoid some of the pitfalls of earlier research by maintaining a sectoral focus; examining a variety of ethnic communities, including white; and by adopting a qualitative approach that facilitates closer examination of issues like the `family’ at work and `co-ethnic’ recruitment. By adopting such an approach, the study can be seen as a `critical case’ of the interaction of culture and economics in self-employment. The ® ndings highlight important areas of convergence. For example, the role of the family in the formation and the management of the enterprise are important across all ethnic groups, although it might occasionally take different forms. It was not a phenomenon con® ned to South Asians. This lends support to earlier studies that have argued for a greater recognition of the importance of sectoral dynamics (Jones et al. 1994); inclusion of white and as well as ethnic minority groups (Jenkins 1986; Zimmer and Aldrich 1987); and the business behaviours of entrepreneurs as a class (Bechoffer and Elliot 1978; Jones et al. 1992; Mulholland 1997). However, some differences did emerge between ethnic minorities in the research. For South Asian groups, it appeared that the business was a `safety net’ for the family. South Asian business owners, like African-Caribbean and white, did not want their children to enter the business. Nevertheless, it was clear that the business was a means of employment for South Asian children, albeit not one of ® rst choice. This might be seen as an example of the cultural importance of the family with South Asian groups; but it emerged from economic necessity rather than notions of `solidarity’ (Metcalf et al. 1996). The nature of gender relations in the ® rms was a further area of difference. In most cases, it was evident that women’s work was often unacknowledged despite its importance to the business. This is in line with a series of studies that have highlighted women’s contribution to small business activity (Baines and Wheelock 1998; Holliday 1995; Mulholland 1997; Phizacklea 1990). However, within South Asian Muslim ® rms, religio-cultural reasons appeared to be important in accounting for the absence of direct involvement in the business (see also Metcalf et al. 1996). It is important nonetheless to bear in mind that the concrete experiences of South Asian Muslim women were not amenable to investigation. Further research is needed to assess more clearly whether women’s roles in such settings are shaped by labour market and domestic



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circumstances, as Brah and Shaw (1992) argue, or re¯ ect the cultural practices of a particular ethnic group. However, even where there is a striking degree of inter-group particularism ± as in the widespread practice of co-ethnic employee recruitment ± the logic cannot be reduced to the single dimension of ethnicity. Indeed, if there is a general lesson to be drawn from all this it is that ethnic entrepreneurialism can only be understood as a multi-dimensional organism existing in an external context that needs to be properly speci® ed. Such is the state of our understanding now compared to even a decade ago, that it is no longer tenable to understand the entrepreneurial trajectory of any ethnic community from an ascribed set of static and arbitrary cultural traits. This is not a re-visiting of the culture-versus-structure debate; rather, it is a step towards a more dynamic understanding of culture and the way this interacts with the structural context in which ethnic minority enterprise is inescapably embedded. In line with this approach, further research is required to assess whether the processes documented here are generalisable to other sectors. Restaurants provide a range of relatively low-skill tasks and jobs with temporary peaks and troughs; this makes them particularly suitable to the type of ¯ uid, precarious family labour described. Similar dynamics, though not with an explicit focus on the household and the business have been alluded to in `low-skill’ sectors like clothing (Ram 1994; Werbner 1990), and lower-order retailing (Jones et al. 1994). In other sectors, labour requirements may be very different, and the relationship between family processes and business correspondingly different. The increasingly important small ® rm professional service sector is a prime example. Employees working in such ® rms are often highly skilled and `credentialized’. This may leave little scope for the employment of unskilled or semi-skilled family members in the enterprise. Further research on ethnic minority involvement in such sectors would help to shed light on this question. Methodologically, a qualitative orientation would be particularly useful in advancing understanding of how ethnic minority business owners operate in practice. For example, the limitations of quantitative approaches in illuminating the complexity of `family’ involvement in business activities have already been noted. To this end, the Baines and Wheelock (1998) detailed qualitative study of the interaction of households and business ± the `micro-business household’ ± highlights that the kind of family dynamics often presented as speci® c to South Asian groups are a much more common feature of the small business population. Such an approach focuses upon the content of interactions between business owners, family members, labour markets and economic activities; and it is congruent with the move towards a more contextualised approach to ethnic minority business activity.

Acknowledgements We are grateful to the Economic and Social Research Council for funding this study (award no. L130241049) . The ® nancial contributions of Birmingham Business Link, Birmingham Enterprise Link, Birmingham Partnership for Change and Birmingham and Solihull Training and Enterprise Council. We also appreciate the referees’ comments on an earlier version of this article.

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Authors details Monder Ram Faculty of Business and Law Department of Corporate Strategy Leicester Business School De Montfort University The Gateway Leicester LE1 9BH UK E-mail: Monder Ram ,

[email protected] .

Balihar Sanghera, Tahir Abbas, Gerald Barlow and Trevor Jones Enterprise Research Centre University of Central England Business School Perry Barr Birmingham B42 2SU UK