Planning for an Inclusive Entrepreneurial Ecosystem

Abstract

Problem, research strategy, and findings

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has had an unprecedented impact on small businesses in the United States. However, small business resilience scholarship has seldom investigated the experiences of minority-owned businesses. In this study I used an evolutionary resilience perspective to examine the experiences of Latina-owned businesses (LaOBs) in inland Southern California in coping with the pandemic. I conducted in-depth interviews and focus group discussions, both before and following the start of COVID-19, with a broad array of stakeholders from multiple sectors of the community. By triangulating their different perspectives, I found that the short-term crisis attributed to COVID-19 stems from long-term underinvestment in entrepreneurship and business development in underserved communities. Socioeconomic vulnerability at both the individual and community levels affects LaOBs’ resilience, a resilience conditioned by pre-pandemic networking and the institutional structures existing in underserved communities. This study is limited because it focused on only one study area, and it did not have access to large-scale quantitative data for comparative studies across ethnic groups and places.

Takeaway for practice

Building preparedness and resilience among racial and ethnic minority-owned businesses requires continuous investment in technology, education, and social network building in underserved communities, as well as the fostering of an inclusive entrepreneurship ecosystem. Planners should acknowledge and embrace a growing, critical mass of LaOBs as an opportunity to support economic and community development. Economic development policies, workforce development, and social policies targeting poverty alleviation and immigrant integration should be considered together. Engaging with the needs and aspirations of LaOBs and their communities will help generate more meaningful policies for underserved communities like these. The findings call for a forward-looking attitude toward developing a more transformational agenda that opens opportunities for underrepresented voices and challenges the problematic power structures existing in today’s society.

Keywords:

• COVID-19
• gender
• race
• small business resilience
• underserved communities

Acknowledgments

Special thanks to the businesses and community stakeholders who generously gave their time and shared their experiences. The project would have been impossible without the guidance and assistance to connect with local community provided by Rosible Ochoa, Ruth Lopez Novodor, Maria Molina Solano, and Faby Carrera. Graduate students Elizabeth Ruano, Kathryn O’Neill, Reyna Peña-Calvillo, and Nataly Morales Sandoval provided research assistance for data collection. The final version of the article has also significantly benefited from the thorough and constructive comments from the Editor, Dr. Ann Forsyth, and the anonymous reviewers.

Data Availability Statement

Due to the nature of this research, participants of this study did not agree for their data to be shared publicly, so supporting data are not available.

Supplemental Material

Supplemental data for this article can be found on the publisher’s website.

Notes

1 The goal of this study was not to compare differences across racial and gender groups. Rather, the data on other racial and gender groups provided an important context in which to interpret the data on LaOBs, instead of treating LaOBs as an isolated group.

2 Although the goal of qualitative research is not to represent every business in the region, the characteristics of the LaOB participants in this study were generally consistent with the census data (Table 2). To reduce possible biases caused by the small sample size, businesses were recruited from diverse backgrounds and their experiences were triangulated with those of stakeholders from a wide range of sectors.

3 One advantage of focus group discussions lies in the group dynamics that develop with rich face-to-face, on-the-spot interactions (Morgan, 1996). However, because of the virtual mode of interviewing, especially at the beginning of the pandemic, such an advantage was not obvious. Furthermore, both businesses and service providers were overwhelmed by the pandemic disruptions. It was a significant challenge to schedule people to get together. Therefore, in-depth interviews were preferred over focus group discussions in Stage 2.

4 Interview data showed that for the people who had already received government aid, assistance mainly came from federal aid. Although grants and assistance from local government are easier to obtain than assistance from federal programs, in most cases they do not offer enough support when compared with businesses’ huge financial needs.

Additional information

Funding

Research for this study was supported by the NSF (2029516) and the National Latina Business Women Association IE Institute.

Notes on contributors

Qingfang Wang

QINGFANG WANG ([email protected]) is a professor of geography and public policy at the University of California, Riverside.