Facilitating and maintaining research access into ethnic minority firms

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to address the cultural challenges of gaining and maintaining qualitative research access into ethnic small firms. In particular, it evaluates the influence of cultural affinity - between researchers and business owners - on gaining and maintaining access into ethnic minority owned firms. Design/methodology/approach - This paper reflects on the experiences of facilitating and maintaining research access into a sample of 258 small Turkish and Chinese ethnic minority businesses in London. Findings - This paper study illustrates that researchers need to demonstrate cultural awareness to ethnic business owners and understand the socio-cultural environment in which their firms operate in order to be able to gain and maintain research access. Research limitations/implications - Data collection is limited to Turkish and Chinese ethnic minority owned businesses in London, and other ethnic entrepreneurs are excluded. Therefore, care should be taken in making generalisations from the sample. Practical implications - This paper identifies a number of important skills which can be exploited in negotiating and gaining research access. These are communication, interpersonal and cultural awareness skills. Originality/value - This paper addresses a neglected area in the research process, namely research access, which has important implications for the type of data collected, sampling and data collection techniques. The paper thus identifies "research access" as an important element of research design.