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The British and How to Deal with Them: Doing Business with Britain`s Ethnic Minorities
Ethnic businesses make a significant contribution to the UK economy. For example 12% of all business start ups now feature ethnic enterprises. Why then have many mainstream UK businesses been unable to harness the opportunities offered by this valuable element of the economy? Incorporating ethnic businesses into their supply chains or engaging them as customers must be a priority but establishing an effective method of communication often evades even the largest corporate body.
In ‘The British….’ Ram Gidoomal, Deepak Mahtani and David Porter demonstrate the importance of ethnic businesses to the UK. The book illustrates the characteristics of the ethnic communities and discusses how to build cross-cultural relationships. It is a map of territory that is largely uncharted and celebrates a national resource that has often gone completely ignored. The authors also identify a number of ‘fault-lines’ which affect the integration of ethnic businesses into the UK economy.

The authors argue that UK businesses pursue overseas markets for goods, skills, services and expertise that can be found here in abundance. They show how indigenous businesses are often prevented from conducting business with ethnic enterprises because they fail to understand the importance of key cultural factors that affect business transactions.

The book highlights how many ethnic businesses remain virtually untouched by the very government agencies designed to support the business integration and economic sustainability of small businesses. Lack of cultural awareness inhibits take up of government initiatives and can lead to the development of ‘ethnic economies’ detached from the local and regional economies.

To support their challenge to both government and the commercial world the authors provide an overview of the ethnic communities of Britain, with many pages of information and useful resources. By using the views and experience of people from a range of ethnic business communities the reader is privy to many of the issues and opportunities that exist in our multicultural business environment. The case studies include a Dutch executive of Shell; an American IT executive; a South Asian retailing entrepreneur; a Japanese banker; an African business consultant; a Malaysian-Chinese biotechnology entrepreneur; a Polish chef and several representatives of inter-cultural business services.