评论文章:小企业劳动过程中的族群差异

Review article: Ethnic variations on the small firm labour process

INTERNATIONAL SMALL BUSINESS JOURNAL · 2010
被引 44
人大 A-ABS 3

中文导读

认为英国亚裔小企业主并非因族群优势而享有特殊劳动力优势,其劳动过程受行业、市场和管理角色等普遍因素影响,族群关系只是其中之一。

Abstract

Consistent with a growing recognition that all entrepreneurs irrespective of ethnicity are grounded in social capital, we argue that the deployment of labour in UK Asian firms is best understood by reference to the mainstream literature on small firm industrial relations. Conventionally, Asian firm owners are seen as enjoying exceptional advantages through uniquely privileged access to an unusually cost-effective co-ethnic labour force. Yet reference to the general discourse shows that one of the defining features of the small firm labour process is its great diversity, with workers subject to a varying mix of control strategies. Ethnicity of ownership is only one of a range of factors here, with influences such as sectoral location, market position and managerial role requiring greater attention. Drawing both from the mainstream small business and ethnic minority business literatures and from our own Asian firm case histories in the clothing and catering industries, we demonstrate that, while ethnic ties certainly do help to shape employer-worker relations, they do not operate independently of universal forces that are ethnic-non-specific. As Kloosterman et al. (1999)’s concept of mixed embeddedness suggests, ethnic minority firms must be seen as grounded in an external structural context as well as in their own community networks.

小企业劳动过程族群差异社会资本工业关系