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The Palgrave Handbook of Minority Entrepreneurship 1St Edition Edition Thomas M Cooney Full Chapter
The Palgrave Handbook of Minority Entrepreneurship 1St Edition Edition Thomas M Cooney Full Chapter
The Palgrave
Handbook of Minority
Entrepreneurship
Editor
Thomas M. Cooney
Dublin, Ireland
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature
Switzerland AG 2021
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Contents
Introduction
Minority Entrepreneurship: Setting the Context 3
Thomas M. Cooney
v
vi Contents
Conclusion
HEIs, Minority Communities and Enterprising Behaviour 565
Emma O’Brien and Thomas M. Cooney
Index 583
Notes on Contributors
ix
x Notes on Contributors
The recipient on numerous research grants, he has also been an active member
on several Ministerial Advisory groups.
Arantxa Grau-Muñoz is Ph.D. in Sociology and Associate Professor in the
Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology at Universitat de València
(Spain). Her lines of research are in sociology of health and illness and in
sociology of gender. She is currently translating into Spanish Barbara Risman’s
book ‘Where the Millennial will take us, A New Generation Wrestles with the
Gender Structure’. One of the topics addressed in the book has to do with
gender differences of young Millennials in their relation with work.
Patricia G. Greene is the former 18th Director of the Women’s Bureau of
the U.S. Department of Labor and is now Professor Emeritus at Babson
College (USA) where she formerly served as Dean of the Undergraduate
School and later as Provost. She is senior educational advisor for Portfolia, a
company with a new model for investing in businesses. Professor Greene led
the design, development and deployment of Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small
Businesses and served as the Global Academic Director of 10,000 Women.
She is a founding member of the Diana Project, a research group dedicated
to studying women business owners and their businesses.
Francis J. Greene is Chair of Entrepreneurship at the University of Edin-
burgh Business School (UK). He has been working on youth entrepreneur-
ship matters for a number of years and has worked with Organisation of
Economic Co-operation and Development, the European Commission and
Ernst and Young to develop better youth entrepreneurship policy.
Trevor Jones is Professorial Research Fellow at Centre for Research in Ethnic
Minority Entrepreneurship at Aston University (UK). He has published
extensively on ethnic minority entrepreneurship and is a pioneer of the field
in the UK.
Sibel Ozasir Kacar is Assistant Professor at the Department of Business
Administration at Nijmegen School of Management, Radboud University
(The Netherlands). She holds a Ph.D., a Master’s degree in business admin-
istration, and specialises in entrepreneurship. Her research focuses on the
interaction between gendered and ethnicised opportunity structures and the
identity construction processes of Turkish (migrant) women entrepreneurs.
Eva Kašperová is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Research in Ethnic
Minority Entrepreneurship, Aston University (UK). She has been researching
Notes on Contributors xiii
Norris Krueger Few are able to make a difference in research, education and
entrepreneurship, but Norris manages to keep moving the needle for all three
with proven, recognised expertise in growing entrepreneurial thinkers and
entrepreneurial communities. As a thought leader in entrepreneurial learning,
his university programmes earned six national & two global best prac-
tice recognitions. The most-cited scholar in his specialty on entrepreneurial
thinking, he serves as Senior Subject Matter Expert at OECD/EU for both
entrepreneurial learning and entrepreneurial ecosystems. Dr. Krueger serves
as Goal Champion for the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation’s ESHIP
initiative to support ecosystem building and ecosystem builders.
Jonathan Levie is Professor of Entrepreneurship & Regional Development
in the J.E. Cairnes School of Business & Economics in NUI Galway (Ireland).
He has held research and teaching posts at Strathclyde Business School and
London Business School (UK), Babson College (USA), INSEAD (France)
and University College, Cork (Ireland). Professor Levie was associate coordi-
nator of Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) in its founding year and
has served as an elected member of the board of GEM’s governing body, the
Global Entrepreneurship Research Association (GERA). While at Strathclyde,
he co-directed GEM in the UK with Professor Mark Hart of Aston Business
School.
Alex Maritz is a Professor of Entrepreneurship at the La Trobe Business
School, Melbourne (Australia). He has procured in excess of $4.1 million in
external research grants and consultancies (including Chief Investigator of an
ARC Grant in Biodevices), plus he has published over 200 scholarly reviewed
articles in entrepreneurship, with 27 successful higher degree research comple-
tions (including 13 Ph.D.s). His current interests include the development of
cross-disciplinary entrepreneurship education (including online and blended
technology innovations), Australian leadership of research and engagement on
Senior Entrepreneurship, Ph.D. supervision, startup consulting and interna-
tional engagement with leading and prominent entrepreneurship ecosytems,
networks and collaborations.
Tim Mazzarol is a Winthrop Professor within the Faculty of Arts Business
Law and Education at the University of Western Australia. His research and
teaching focuses on entrepreneurship, innovation, small business manage-
ment, commercialisation, marketing and strategy. He is a Qualified Profes-
sional Market Researcher with the Research Society of Australia, a Fellow
of the Australian Institute of Management, Director of the Centre for
Entrepreneurial Management and Innovation (CEMI), coordinator of the
Notes on Contributors xv
policymakers and the general public in the UK and beyond through consul-
tancy reports, practitioner workshops, policy hackathons, mass media and
social media.
Emma O’Brien is a Communications Lecturer in the College of Arts and
Tourism, Technological University Dublin (TU Dublin), Ireland. Emma’s
Ph.D. involved a study of higher education’s role in the development of inclu-
sive entrepreneurial education for disadvantaged communities. Emma’s back-
ground in science, science communication, business and education facilitates
a transdisciplinary approach to her research. Emma was previously the Educa-
tion, Outreach and Entrepreneurship Manager at the Biomedical Diagnos-
tics Institute, Dublin City University. In this role, Emma was responsible
for developing innovative biomedical engagement initiatives that engaged
intergenerational audiences through formal and informal education.
Daniel Örtqvist is Professor in Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Luleå
University of Technology (Sweden) and Deputy Head of the Department for
Business Administration and Social Sciences. His academic research mainly
concerns the entrepreneurial identity, the establishment of new ventures and
regional development and innovation system research.
David Rae is Professor of Enterprise and Director of the Centre for Enter-
prise & Innovation at Leicester Castle Business School, De Montfort
University, Leicester (UK). He is a recognised innovator and researcher in
entrepreneurial learning, leadership and management who has held senior
academic roles at six universities. He won the European Entrepreneurship
Education Award in 2020, for his twenty-year contribution to entrepreneur-
ship research, education, policy and regional development at a European and
international level. His research interests include: Leadership for sustainable
entrepreneurship; Intercultural, minorities and international entrepreneur-
ship; Entrepreneurial Learning and entrepreneurship education and Open
Data and Open Entrepreneurship.
Monder Ram is Professor of Entrepreneurship and is the Director of the
Centre for Research in Ethnic Minority Entrepreneurship at Aston Univer-
sity (UK). He is a leading authority on small business and ethnic minority
entrepreneurship research and has published widely on the subject. He is a
member of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Black Asian and Minority
Ethnic Business Owners. He also holds visiting positions at Warwick Univer-
sity (UK) and the University of Turku (Finland).
Notes on Contributors xvii
(Finland), University of Turku (Finland) and the Maltese NGO People for
Change Foundation. She has obtained a Masters Degree in Baltic Sea Region
Studies at the University of Turku (Finland) and passed a Masters specialia-
tion in Globalization, Migration and Development at the Radboud Univer-
sity (The Netherlands). Ekaterina has published both joint and indepen-
dently authored articles on forced migration, migrant entrepreneurship and
transnationalism in Finland, Poland, Bangladesh and Russia.
Huibert P. de Vries (Herb) is an Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship in
the Department of Management, Marketing and Entrepreneurship at the
University of Canterbury (New Zealand). His research interests and publi-
cations lie in the fields of ethnic minority entrepreneurship, indigenous entre
preneurship, organisational and entrepreneurial resilience, small business and
business education.
Mirela Xheneti is a Senior Lecturer in Entrepreneurship and Small Business
at the University of Sussex Business School (UK). Mirela holds a Ph.D. from
the University of Bristol (UK). Prior to joining Sussex, Mirela worked as a
researcher at the Small Business Research Centre, Kingston University. Mirela
has a long-standing interest in how institutional change and enterprise poli-
cies affect entrepreneurial behaviour placing particular emphasis on the role
of context. Mirela’s work has appeared in numerous journal articles and book
chapters. Most recently, her work has been published in: Entrepreneurship and
Regional Development Journal ; Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal ; International
Journal of Management Reviews and Journal of Business Ethics.
List of Figures
xix
xx List of Figures
Indigenous Entrepreneurship
Fig. 1 Indigenous versus Western Socioeconomic Objectives 330
xxiii
xxiv List of Tables
Indigenous Entrepreneurship
Table 1 Collectivism vs individualism 322
Table 2 Identification of Indigenous peoples 324
Table 3 Identification of Indigenous entrepreneurship 328
Table 4 Indigenous Socioeconomic Objectives 329
Table 5 Select Osoyoos Indian Band Development Corporation
Businesses 334
Table 6 Challenges to Indigenous Entrepreneurship 335
Table 7 Indigenous socioeconomic objectives 337
Introduction
The year 2020 will feature prominently in history books as a global pandemic
swept across the world and changed lives forever. Large-scale rates of deaths
and virus infections were visited upon people of all backgrounds and mate-
rialised in countries at all levels of economic development. The virus was
not selective in terms of victim profile, although some demographics suffered
death and infection rates higher than others. As the pandemic expanded
its reach and the economic effects caused by countries taking corrective
measures (such as national, regional and local lockdowns) had escalating
impact upon rates of unemployment, an increasing body of evidence began
to emerge that minority communities were being disproportionately affected
by unemployment. A similar trend was identified during the global reces-
sion of 2008–2010, while subsequent research found that such communities
were unemployed for longer periods than people outside of these communi-
ties. During the recovery period of that global recession, people from such
communities were encouraged to create self-employment as an alternative
pathway to labour market activation. However, ‘minority entrepreneurship’ is
not the same as entrepreneurship experienced by the majority population as
T. M. Cooney (B)
Technological University Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
e-mail: thomas.cooney@tudublin.ie
potential contribution that people from these minority communities can offer
when truly integrated as equal members of society. Indeed, many people view
minority communities as a ‘problem issue’ that needs to be resolved as such
communities are frequently considered a drain on the national exchequer
because of the high unemployment rates and other disadvantages that they
suffer. Unfortunately, too few people see minority communities as a positive
opportunity to bolster local economies and enhance societies stimulated by
the benefits of diversity and inclusion.
The number of people who can be categorised as members of the various
minority communities is much larger than many people expect. For example,
according to the World Bank (2020a), over one billion people (approxi-
mately 15% of the world’s population) experience some form of disability and
are more likely to experience adverse socio-economic outcomes than people
without disabilities. According to the World Economic Forum (2020), there
are an estimated 272 million international migrants around the world which
represents approximately 3.5% of the world’s population. Recent estimates
on global poverty from the World Bank (2020b) suggested that 9.2% of the
world’s population, or 689 million people, live in extreme poverty on $1.90
or less a day. The report also intimated that global extreme poverty is expected
to rise in 2020 for the first time in over 20 years due to the COVID-19
pandemic. The terms ‘minority’ and ‘marginalised’ are frequently understood
to be a small number of people in society and therefore almost irrelevant
to the greater well-being of the country. However, the reality is that these
communities are large percentages of every nation’s population and therefore
cannot be dismissed as inconsequential.
When people from minority communities seek assistance from enterprise
support agencies, the response that is habitually received is that minority
entrepreneurs are equally eligible to apply for any support programme that
is available to ‘mainstream entrepreneurs’. However, a frequent finding in
academic literature on minority entrepreneurs is their low propensity to use
mainstream business support agencies, so they frequently rely instead on
self-help and informal sources of assistance. The barriers to a larger accep-
tance of assistance from enterprise support agencies have included issues
such as: not being aware of the existence of such assistance, the inappro-
priateness of service offerings and a lack of trust and confidence in those
delivering support. For example, enterprise support agencies regularly possess
websites that do not have universal design, events are held in locations that
are not accessible to all potential clients and staff are not trained to under-
stand and address the additional and distinctive challenges faced by minority
entrepreneurs. Indeed, responses such as ‘we treat everyone the same’ and ‘our
door is open to everyone’ are commonly used to defend existing practices when
Minority Entrepreneurship: Setting the Context 7
the reality is that treating everyone the same is not good practice and not
everybody knows that their door exists!
The extent to which the support needs of minority businesses are distinc-
tive in comparison with those of mainstream businesses is the subject of
much debate and is addressed throughout the book. Although many of the
support needs of minority businesses are shared with their majority coun-
terparts, there are also specific challenges unique to the different minority
communities and these have implications for the way business supports
might be delivered if they are to be effective. Minority entrepreneurs are also
confronted with challenges in respect of starting and managing a business
that is peculiar to their circumstances and these include a lack of business
contacts, greater difficulty in accessing finance from institutional sources and
an information deficit when it comes to negotiating the business regulatory
and legal environments.
Guided by economic growth as well as by social objectives, targeted inter-
vention to directly assist aspiring minority entrepreneurs is being introduced
to good effect in some countries where the value of such communities is
being increasingly recognised. What is required across many more coun-
tries is targeted intervention promoted through the social networks and
media channels favoured by minority communities. Any such targeted
intervention should recognise the distinctive challenges faced by minority
entrepreneurs, but should also appreciate the unique advantages that they
can offer through their established networks within their own communi-
ties. At a time when countries are seeking to build trade to recover from
the COVID-19 pandemic, it is arguable that minority communities are a
positive resource that is not being constructively utilised. This book seeks to
highlight the value of advocating greater levels of minority entrepreneurial
activity, while recognising that being more inclusive of these communities
is not a panacea to all the economic and social challenges facing a nation.
Equally, it is not being proposed that every person from a minority commu-
nity should be encouraged to become an entrepreneur, since not everyone has
the capacity to become a successful entrepreneur and not all business ideas are
worth pursuing.
are the core sections. Part II contains five chapters which offer overviews
of the current situation from different perspectives. Part III contains 12
chapters, with each one dedicated to examining a single minority commu-
nity. The communities investigated are: women, youth, seniors, immigrants,
LGBTQ+, people with disabilities, NEETs, ex-offenders, indigenous people,
Roma, refugees and unemployed. Each chapter explores the academic liter-
ature concerning a specific minority community and their needs relevant to
entrepreneurial activity. Part IV contains five chapters and offers different
viewpoints regarding the future of research, training and policymaking related
to minority communities. Overall, the book provides a detailed mapping
of the literature on the topic of minority entrepreneurship and identifies
multiple opportunities for further research.
Chapter ‘Understanding the Term ‘Minority Entrepreneurship’’ from
Dana and Vorobeva opens Part II of the book with a detailed, in-depth
review of the literature that considers the evolution and many interpretations
of the term ‘Minority Entrepreneurship’. Its purpose is to take the reader
through the journey of this evolution in a comprehensive fashion. This is
followed by a review of the data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor
in chapter ‘What Does GEM Say About Minority Entrepreneurship?’ by
Levie and Mwaura which presents empirical evidence that entrepreneurial
activity among minorities may in practice be more a result of, rather than
a solution to, a lack of basic economic alternatives (such as social security),
while a theme of unfulfilled intentions points to discrimination during and
after start-up. In chapter ‘Social Networks and “Missing Entrepreneurs”’,
Menzies discusses the role of social networks and argues that family social
networks can have positive and negative effects, while formal networks have
been successful in some contexts. Chapter ‘Opportunity Structures from an
Intersectional Perspective’ from Kacar, Verduijn and Essers criticises existing
theoretical perspectives on opportunity structures, in relation to minority
entrepreneurs, for the predominant insistence on they being objective, mate-
rial rules and resources, and the same for everyone. This section of the
book concludes with chapter ‘Beyond “Getting Asked to Dance”: Inclusive
Entrepreneurial Ecosystems’ from Krueger who provides an overview of the
key aspects of how to develop entrepreneurial ecosystems inclusively and he
discusses how a focus on true inclusion is a ‘rising tide strategy’ that lifts all
entrepreneurial boats in the community.
Part III of the book exams entrepreneurial behaviour among each of
the 12 different communities identified for the book. The section begins
with chapter ‘Do Women Engage Differently in Entrepreneurship?’ by
Brush and Greene which explores the narratives that highlight differences
Minority Entrepreneurship: Setting the Context 9
Conclusion
This book collects the expertise and experience of scholars from across
the globe and offers a broad range of perspectives relating to minority
entrepreneurship. The ambition of the book is to present a meticulous
analysis of current thinking, thereby offering a basis from which future
researchers can contribute further insights and knowledge. Ultimately, this
book contributes to existing knowledge by:
a social lens via concepts such as equality, diversity and inclusion, this book
predominantly uses an economic lens to highlight the economic advantages
that engendering greater levels of entrepreneurial activity among minority
and marginalised communities can bring at a local and national level.
References
Cooney, T. M., & Licciardi, M. (2019). The Same but Different: Under-
standing Entrepreneurial Behaviour in Disadvantaged Communities—From:
“Entrepreneurial Behaviour: Individual, Contextual and Micro-Foundational
Perspectives” (Editors: M. McAdam and J. Cunningham). Palgrave Macmillan,
Basingstoke.
Foley, D., & Cooney, T. M. (2017). Entrepreneurship, Enterprise and Irish
Travellers. Small Enterprise Research, 24(1), 73–87.
Galloway, L., & Cooney, T. (2012). Silent Minorities of Entrepreneurship. Interna-
tional Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, 13(2), 77–79.
OECD/European Union (2013). The Missing Entrepreneurs 2013: Policies for
Inclusive Entrepreneurship. OECD Publishing, Paris.
OECD/European Union (2014). The Missing Entrepreneurs 2014: Policies for
Inclusive Entrepreneurship. OECD Publishing, Paris.
OECD/European Union (2015). The Missing Entrepreneurs 2015: Policies for
Inclusive Entrepreneurship. OECD Publishing, Paris.
OECD/European Union (2017). The Missing Entrepreneurs 2017: Policies for
Inclusive Entrepreneurship. OECD Publishing, Paris.
OECD/European Union (2019). The Missing Entrepreneurs 2019: Policies for
Inclusive Entrepreneurship. OECD Publishing, Paris.
Wood, G. J., Fielden, S., & Davidson, M. J. (2012). Minorities in Entrepreneurship:
An International Review. Edward Elgar, Cheltenham.
World Bank (2020a). Disability Inclusion. https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/
disability#:~:text=Results-,One%20billion%20people%2C%20or%2015%25%
20of%20the%20world’s%20population%2C,million%20people%2C%20expe
rience%20significant%20disabilities. Accessed 31 October 2020.
World Bank (2020b). Poverty. https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/poverty/ove
rview. Accessed 2 November 2020.
World Economic Forum (2020). Global Migration, by the Numbers: Who
Migrates, Where They Go and Why. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/
01/iom-global-migration-report-international-migrants-2020/#:~:text=There%
20are%20an%20estimated%20272%20million%20international%20migrants%
20around%20the,they%20were%20born%20has%20tripled. Accessed 31
October 2020.
Understanding the Current Situation
Understanding the Term ‘Minority
Entrepreneurship’
Léo-Paul Dana and Ekaterina Vorobeva
Introduction
Since Sombart (1911), minority entrepreneurship has been an enticing topic
that has attracted researchers (with roots in diverse disciplines ranging from
economics to sociology) to observe that entrepreneurial behaviour differs
across various communities. However, it was not until recent times that the
wide assortment of studies on this topic was first collected into publication
(Dana 2007c). While the research is rich, ambiguities are many. According
to the federal government of the USA, Afro-Americans, Alaska Natives,1
American Indians and Latinos qualify as minority entrepreneurs, as do
persons of Asian or Pacific Island ancestry. In academia, different disciplines
have developed a rich literature without a commonly agreed terminology
or agenda, and each has used the term minority entrepreneurship in line
1 Comparing Alaska Natives and others in Alaska, Light and Dana (2013) identified and explained
major differences in attitudes and behaviour with regards to entrepreneurship.
L.-P. Dana
Dalhousie University, Halifax Regional Municipality, NS, Canada
e-mail: lp762359@dal.ca
E. Vorobeva (B)
University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany
e-mail: vorobeva@uni-bremen.de
with its traditions and respective foci. In other words, the relevant body of
literature lacks a unifying focus (Bates 2011). Moreover, questions raised as
well as methods utilised significantly differ between the disciplines (Bates
2011). The problem is that this creates conceptual confusion that may hinder
fruitful interdisciplinary work. The objective of this chapter is to facilitate
inclusive discussions about the topic with the ambition of reaching some
form of common understanding.
The growing interest in minority entrepreneurship—and lack of agree-
ment—may be partly attributed to the increasing scale of the phenomenon.
Having traditionally concentrated in marginal sectors, minority entrepreneurs
have managed to not only significantly grow in number in recent years, but
also to enter more profitable industries. Although many minority enterprises
were usually small businesses such as barbershops/hair salons, retail stores
and small cafes, minority business people have more recently been highly
active in profitable industry sectors of information technology, wholesaling
and manufacturing (Bates et al. 2018). This positive shift was partly enabled
by a decline in discriminatory barriers (Bates 2011). An increasingly inclusive
business environment has opened-up new opportunities for minorities, and
this has had an important impact on their success indicators. For example,
the gross receipts of minority enterprises appear to grow much faster than
the ones of non-minority businesses in the USA (Barr 2015). Moreover, as
entrepreneurship education becomes more mainstream, minorities have also
enjoyed better access to highly valuable cultural and knowledge capital, which
plays a crucial role in entrepreneurial activities (Marchand and Hermens
2015).
Norwegian anthropologist Frederik Barth (1963) studied entrepreneur-
ship as an activity involving the relationship of persons and institutions in
communities with unlike ethnicities; he placed a great emphasis on the exis-
tence of different spheres of values, and he described an entrepreneur as
being an essential broker, mediating boundary transfers in a situation of
contacts between cultures. The economist Reuven Brenner suggested that
entrepreneurial risk-taking was a strategy by which social groups attempted
to regain good fortunes following an unanticipated decline experienced by
that community (Brenner 1987). The sociologist Ivan Light pioneered the
concept that ethnic minority entrepreneurship is an adaptation to labour
market discrimination prompting immigrants to adopt marginal niches in
the economy to gain upward social mobility (Light 1972). These examples
highlight how interdisciplinary the topic has become in recent decades, with
Gurau et al. (2020) providing a contemporary interdisciplinary model of
Understanding the Term ‘Minority Entrepreneurship’ 17
unites all means of production and who finds in the value of the products…the
re-establishment of the entire capital he employs, and the value of the wages,
the interest, and the rent which he pays, as well as the profits belonging to
himself. (Say 1816, pp. 28–29)
some control over the means of production and produces more than he can
consume in order to sell (or exchange) it for individual (or household) income.
(McClelland 1961, p. 65)
Based on the classical definition of the word, which can be traced to the
German unternehmung (literally translated as ‘undertaking’), the work of
Dana has generally understood entrepreneurship as referring to an economic
undertaking (Dana 1999, 2007b, 2018).
Similar to the words ‘entrepreneur’ and ‘entrepreneurship’, the term
‘minority entrepreneurship’ may have multiple meanings. Most loosely,
minority entrepreneurship entails a self-employment enterprise run by
a person who is not typical of the mainstream society and can therefore be
described by the adjective minority (Waldinger et al. 1990; Greene and Butler
1996; Richtermeyer 2002). Deriving from the fact that the entrepreneurship
scene arguably remains a playground of native-born middle-class white male
city residents in the age bracket 35–44 years, minority entrepreneurship
is expected to introduce distinct, non-dominant axes of nationality, class,
race, age, gender or location (Parker 2009; Irastorza and Peña 2014; Ram
et al. 2017; White 2018). Moreover, Bates et al. (2018) mentioned that a
composition of social groups defined as minorities can change over time.
This dependency on characteristics of mainstream society as well as a studied
18 L.-P. Dana and E. Vorobeva
social actors who enact networks, ideas, information and practices for the
purpose of seeking business opportunities or maintaining businesses with dual
social fields, which in turn force them to engage in varied strategies of action
to promote their entrepreneurial activities. (Drori et al. 2009, p. 1001)
2 Fordiscussions of diaspora see: Brubaker (2005), Cohen (2008), de Lange (2013), Rauch (2001)
and Sheffer (2003).
22 L.-P. Dana and E. Vorobeva
Gradually changing gender roles paved the way for acknowledging the
indispensable role of females in the entrepreneurship ecosystem. Female
entrepreneurs proved to create new strategies of business management.
For example, their enterprises are orchestrated around relation-based strong
connections rather than dispersed business networks (Foss 2017). Moreover,
it was found that female entrepreneurs pursue positive social change more
often than financial gains in their business activities (Ascher 2012; Kearins
and Schaefer 2017). Finally, female entrepreneurship has a potential to intro-
duce new business practices and form unique identities advocating for better
work–family balance in time-consuming and labour-intensive entrepreneur-
ship (Lewis 2017). Juggling to be mothers, wives and businesswomen at
the same time, ‘mumpreneurs’ attempt to combine feminine ideas of moth-
erhood with the perceived masculinity of business activities. Nevertheless,
to demonstrate the relational nature of gender minority similarly to ethnic
minority, let us introduce a few examples. Lithuania has more women
than men in the general population. Hence, a man in Lithuania is in the
minority when it comes to gender; nevertheless, a woman entrepreneur in
Lithuania is referred to as a minority entrepreneur because in terms of
entrepreneurial activity women are outnumbered in the state. The number
of female entrepreneurs also greatly varies across countries (Kelly et al. 2011).
In Ghana there are six businesswomen for every one businessman (Ascher
2012). Many women in Laos are entrepreneurs because religion discourages
men from being entrepreneurial (Dana 1995b), and so in that country male
entrepreneurs constitute a minority. Thus, relativity of the notion ‘gender
minority’ debunking the myth that men always represent a dominant group
has been demonstrated by previous studies (Dana 1995b).
The literature on the connection between age and entrepreneurship does
not offer a systematic analysis. Nevertheless, there are a few crucial find-
ings shedding some light on what role age can play in the business market.
For example, it was found that entrepreneurial intentions decrease (Lévesque
and Minniti 2006), while business opportunities grow with age (Lee and
Vouchilas 2016). However, the peak of entrepreneurial activities seems to be
Understanding the Term ‘Minority Entrepreneurship’ 23
achieved in the age brackets from 35 to 44 years (Parker 2009). Since the
results of studies have proven to be mixed, different types of entrepreneur-
ship (e.g. novice vs. non-novice, incorporated vs. unincorporated) also need
to be considered in order to better understand the impact of age on busi-
ness activities (Zhang and Acs 2018). For example, full-time entrepreneurship
is decreasing, while part-time self-employment is growing with age (Zhang
and Acs 2018). In the body of relevant literature, both youth and elderly
people have been discussed as age minorities. Indeed, together with under-
representation within the entrepreneurship community, they suffer direct
or indirect discrimination related to their age. Nevertheless, similar to
previously discussed categories of ethnicity and gender, the term minority
proved to be relational regarding age groups as well. The definition of age
minorities largely depends on national demographic indicators such as life
expectancy, age of maturity, retirement age, etc. Elder generations seem to
enjoy better entrepreneurship opportunities enabled by accumulated social,
human and economic forms of capital. Indeed, knowledge-based economy
favours entrepreneurs with extensive professional experience. Loarne-Lemaire
et al. (2017) have suggested that seniors embark in social enterprises with a
conscious willingness to help society, while Maalaoui (2019) emphasized the
uniqueness of elderly entrepreneurship. The study of Azoulay et al. (2020)
claimed that better chances for success come with higher age; a 50-year-old
founder is two times more likely to make higher profits than a 30-year-old.
As a result, growth-oriented businesses with large economic impacts belong
to middle-aged entrepreneurs, not young entrepreneurs (Azoulay et al. 2020).
Nevertheless, experience is often discussed as an opposition to creativity,
which closes the doors to innovative sectors for many elderly entrepreneurs.
Favouring youth, Silicon Valley has even been accused of ageism (Azoulay
et al. 2020). It can be partly attributed to the belief in the obsolete nature of
human capital possessed by older generations. In addition, the accumulation
of new human capital might be hindered for elderly people. For example,
previous studies indicated that the older a person is, the less likely (s)he will
engage with training for entrepreneurship (Bosma et al. 2008).
With the development of innovation-oriented economies, youth have
started to play a more significant role in the business market. Young people
are believed to be more creative and energetic, they are less likely to be
occupied with family responsibilities (Azoulay et al. 2020). Indeed, many
venture capital firms mention young age as one of the criteria in order to
access their investment programmes. On the other hand, younger generations
struggle to acquire necessary social and financial capital required to build a
sustainable business (Azoulay et al. 2020), with many young people lacking
24 L.-P. Dana and E. Vorobeva
reliable credit history which hampers their access to bank services. When
talking about age in minority entrepreneurship research, the fast-growing
body of research on student entrepreneurship attracts special attention. With
the rising popularity of entrepreneurial activities among students, the term
‘studentpreneur’ has been coined to fully grasp the phenomenon (Marchand
and Hermens 2015). Reasons for engaging with entrepreneurship among
students have proven to be multiple. One of them is the availability of
human resources, as well as entrepreneurial environment created by univer-
sities. Another reason is that entrepreneurship education is becoming more
mainstream and being introduced at different stages of the formal educa-
tion process (Marchand and Hermens 2015). Moreover, iconic figures such as
Sergey Brin, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Larry Page and Mark Zuckerberg (who got
ideas for their successful businesses while studying at the universities) serve as
positive role models for students all over the world. Peter Thiel, co-founder of
PayPal, even created a fellowship programme which provides grants to school
dropouts under the age of 23.
Despite being treated separately in relevant studies, nevertheless, the briefly
outlined minority groups may overlap in identities of individuals, and so they
form more complex entities. This intersection of various identity categories
such as race, age, gender or disability was a focus of intersectionality research
since Crenshaw et al. (1995) identified the special disadvantaged position
of black women in the USA. Therefore, intersectionality research origi-
nated from black feminism through critical race theory and post-colonialism
literature and became especially concerned with position of minorities in
power relations (Crenshaw et al. 1995; Manuel 2006; Hancock 2007).
The approach highlighted complex inequalities and raised the question of
social justice and inclusion (Hancock 2007; Hankivsky and Cormier 2011).
Despite its obvious relevance, the approach of intersectionality has not been
extensively applied in minority entrepreneurship research. Ram et al. (2017)
were among a few researchers who acknowledged the great value of the
paradigm for minority entrepreneurship studies. They claimed that the focus
on intersectional identities of entrepreneurs offers a broader view of their
position in social systems and concluded: