INTRODUCTION: THOUGHTS ON A COMMON THREAD

Abstract

Leading off the book, and the first paper in this section, is, “The Ethnic Ownership Economy” by Ivan Light. This survey paper hardly needs an introduction, because the author is one of the foremost scholars in the field of ethnic economics and entrepreneurship. Ivan Light can be argued to be one of the founders of fields concerned with ethnicity on the strength of his groundbreaking early study Ethnic Enterprise in America (1972). Over the subsequent years he has remained on the cutting edge of research, and the survey paper included here clearly reflects that fact. In this paper, the author reviews and summarizes a significant body of sociological research concerning ethnic economies. He offers three challenges for future research: the first is to examine how the ethnic or immigrant entrepreneurs differ from non-immigrant entrepreneurs, the second is to investigate how immigrants tend to differ in the bundle of resources when compared to their indigenous counterparts, and the third is to study how in multi-ethnic societies non-immigrant entrepreneurs and immigrant/ethnic minority entrepreneurs operate out of social networks with minimal overlap.

Citation

Stiles, C.H. and Galbraith, C.S. (2003), "INTRODUCTION: THOUGHTS ON A COMMON THREAD", Stiles, C.H. and Galbraith, C.S. (Ed.) Ethnic Entrepreneurship: Structure and Process (International Research in the Business Disciplines, Vol. 4), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. XV-XXIII. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1074-7877(03)04018-2