Quinto descubrimiento: Secuencia Omega del MAT

There was also evidence of entrepreneurs who established a social enterprise to respond to very personal experiences. For instance, the Founder of a community group that opened in Hackney in 2004 to deliver training opportunities for young local people argued how she decided to establish a social enterprise because she was motivated by the fact that she grew up in a deprived area and this personal experience sparked her desire to take action. As she pointed out: “When I came back to the UK, well I went to the United States for a while; I didn’t know what I was going to do. They killed a neighbour close to my mum’s house, and I started realising that things that were around when I was young there weren’t any more and that young people were involved in crime; that is how all started” [Founder, CS6].

Independence and control

Other entrepreneurs decided to set up a social enterprise because they were motivated by the need to gain independence and control. An example of this is a British Asian male who worked as an Area Housing Manager before establishing a social enterprise that delivers social housing courses in Tower Hamlets. As observed in Box 6.12, he pointed out that he used to earn more money in his previous jobs, but was not fully satisfied and, thus, decided to set up his own organisation.

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Box 6.12 Motivations driven by entrepreneurs’ desire to gain independence and control

“I wanted to have professional and financial independence, flexibility and control of my destiny. You know… I worked for ten years in social housing in a range of roles from frontline Housing Officer through to Area Manager. I did a lot of training and recruitment courses within organisations and, you know, social housing courses focused too much on the theoretical side and housing requires core communication, common sense; so I decided to set up my own company in 2007. By that time, I was in a full time permanent job as an Area Housing Manager. I was on £43K per year at the time of leaving to set up this company” [Founder, CS7].

Self-fulfilment

The findings suggest that in a number of cases, entrepreneurs were motivated by personal self-fulfilment rather than by their lack of opportunities in the labour market or any other push factor. An example of an entrepreneur who was motivated by a desire for self-fulfilment is a Black British woman who worked as a scientist before opening a community group in Hackney. The founder decided to resign from her previous job to set up a media-related social enterprise. She pointed out: “My background is well… I am a scientist. I’ve got a background in biology. I spent a few years in there but, having said that, I have always being interested in media” [Founder, CS6].

As can be observed in Tables 6.1 and 6.2, overall ethnic minority entrepreneurs in the case study organisations had high levels of skills and previous work experience in the labour market. In one case, a South American woman (Case 8) was unemployed at the time of start-up, but no mention was made of the need to set up a social business due to her lack of opportunities in the labour market. As illustrated in Box 6.13, there were, however, different views among key informants from ethnic minority support bodies of the importance of this factor in other cases.

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Box 6.13 Motivated by entrepreneurs’ lack of opportunities in the labour market

“

prepared to take that risk because they face being unemployed, and having nothing; so you already face other barriers anyway, of exclusion, inequality; so now if you have the opportunity and at the same time fill the gap within the same community, that has been one of the driving forces for people to establish or start a social enterprise” [Head of Sustainability, I10].

“There are barriers in terms of accessing employment and there are people from BME background that are actually forced to look at social enterprises as an economic option for themselves” [BME Development Manager, I12].

6.5 Conclusions

This chapter has provided original evidence about the emergence of ethnic minority social entrepreneurial activities. It was notable from the findings that prospects for and the nature of the emergence of ethnic minority social enterprise activity is greatly affected by contextual factors. In fact, ethnic minority entrepreneurs’ decisions to establish social enterprise activities were closely related to the context in which they were embedded. Evidence reveals that the role of both market and state strongly influenced the emergence of ethnic minority social enterprise activities.

The findings demonstrate that in particular the role of the state has been crucial for the emergence of ethnic minority social entrepreneurial activities in the East London Olympic Boroughs. On the one hand, the New Labour Government’s support for social enterprises and ethnic minority organisational activities since the 1990s providing financial and business support aided their formation (Grenier, 2009). On the other hand, evidence indicates that the shift away from grant funding has compelled many existing ethnic minority voluntary and community organisations to move towards the social enterprise model that started under New Labour and continue with the Coalition Government which has intensified this shift (Madichie and Read, 2008; Di Domenico et al., 2009; Social Enterprise UK, 2011).

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Interestingly, although this evidence indicates that a considerable number of BME VCOs had moved towards the social enterprise model, these organisations often did not identify themselves as “social enterprises”. This reflects the fact that such organisations understood their shift towards trading activities as part of the long-standing process of marketisation of the third sector (Weisbrod, 1998) and, therefore, as part of a largely third sector transition process. This transition has particularly affected ethnic minority voluntary and community organisations that work with ‘single’ minority communities. The policy shift from ‘multiculturalism’ to an ‘integrationist’ approach (Afridi and Warmington, 2009) has compelled existing ethnic minority voluntary and community organisations that operate with specific communities to move towards social enterprise forms to keep their activities running because statutory grant funding opportunities have dried up.

Moreover, ethnic minority social enterprises emerged as a result of the particular socio- economic conditions that deprived local communities faced, particularly ethnic minority groups in the Five London Olympic Boroughs. Ethnic minority entrepreneurs perceived the creation of social enterprise activities as an opportunity to cover service gaps that were not provided by existing statutory welfare services (Peattie and Morley, 2008). The findings also revealed the importance of the ethnic minority entrepreneurs’ motivations in the emergence of ethnic minority social enterprise activities. These entrepreneurs seemed to have a powerful sense of their own agency and were driven by a combination of motives when establishing their social enterprises (Spear, 2006; Humbert, 2012). These motives include both collectivist (having a strong identity, sharing a common faith, race, nationality and locality or/and altruistic values) and individualistic motivational factors (personal experience, a desire for self-fulfilment and the necessity to gain independence and control). There was no strong evidence of entrepreneurs choosing the social enterprise sector due to limited labour opportunities, as most of them were highly skilled individuals that had previous experience often in white-collar jobs in the labour market.

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minority entrepreneurship which suggest that ethnic minority entrepreneurs are driven primarily by their lack of opportunities in the labour market (Baycan-Levent, and Nijkamp, 2009).

Chapter 6 has provided some insights into the factors that facilitate the emergence of ethnic minority social enterprise activities. As the case study organisations studied had all been successful in setting up as social enterprise forms, it was not possible to investigate in this analysis factors impeding ethnic minority social enterprises emergence. Moreover, there are some gaps that required further investigation concerning the factors that facilitate or impede the development of ethnic minority social enterprise activities as opposed to simply their emergence. Therefore, the following chapter (7) presents findings related to the development path of ethnic minority social enterprise activities in the East London Olympic Boroughs.

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CHAPTER 7

FACTORS DRIVING AND CONSTRAINING ETHNIC MINORITY