Social capital and business performance: ethnic enterprises in Canada

The objective of this research was to identify links between social capital and the performance of ethnic businesses. Descriptive analyses, correlation tests and discriminant analyses were conducted on social capital variables compared to an ethnic business performance index, using a sample of 573 entrepreneurs from Chinese, Italian, Indian and Jewish backgrounds. The results point to the existence of a link between business performance and social capital. Analysis was able to predict membership of higher and lower performing businesses from a selection of social capital variables. As an exploratory study, this brings unique results to the ethnic entrepreneurship literature.