British Turkish Business Community
62 NETWORKING CULTURES
British Turkish Business Community
An Exploration
of London’ s Turkish businesses
In engage Issue 2 we told you about a new project underway, funded by the British Academy and researched by Dr Levent Altinay. The project has just been completed and some snippets of the findings is outlined below:
The interrelationship between culture and entrepreneurship: an exploration of London’ s Turkish businesses
Very little is known about Turkish minority • Turkish Cypriots who are fluent in English businesses, how they are evolving, the language target mainstream customers and use depth of ethnic and non ethnic-based formal channels for advice. networks that they create or are drawn into, and very importantly, how they are“ managing • Turkish Cypriots who have had business to survive”. experience and Turkish who practice their religion
The project aimed to understand the employ most of their employees from co-ethnics. interrelationship between culture and immigrant entrepreneurship with reference to London’ s Turkish • Turkish who are fluent in English use formal community. One hundred seventy nine face-to-face channels for advice. interviews were conducted with entrepreneurs who work in retail, wholesale, and catering sectors. The study concludes that Turkish speaking entrepreneurs’ cultural backgrounds should be
• There is a relationship between the religion more aligned with the management practices and business experience of Turkish speaking in the UK in order to be able to enhance the entrepreneurs and their firms ' recruitment. competitiveness of their firms. Dr Levent Altinay would like to acknowledge the
• The English fluency of the entrepreneurs also support of The British Academy for the project influences their choice of using formal channels‘ The Interrelationship between Culture and for advice as well as the choice of targeted
Entrepreneurship: An exploration of London’ s mainstream customers. Turkish Businesses’
For full details of this report please contact:
Dr Levent Altinay Reader in Strategic Management Principal Investigator of ESRC Ethnic Minority Business Project, Department of HLTM, Business School,
Oxford Brookes University, Gipsy Lane Campus, Headington, Oxford, OX3 0BP, UK
laltinay @ brookes. ac. uk Tel: + 44( 0) 1865 483832 Fax:( 0) 1865 483878
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engage | uk ISSUE FIVE 2007