Where Does My Help Come From? An analysis of the business support ecosystems of minority business owners in Chicago

Minority business owners (MOs) naturally build value-creating relationships within their racial groups, and co-ethnic business networks and organizations utilize racially grounded social capital to empower MOs, share information, and combat wealth disparities. While ethnic solidarity remains an important anchor for minorities, this thesis challenges the assumption that it should be the foundation of business support at the organizational level. 26 MOs interviewed for this study revealed distinctive motivations, rationality, and autonomy in their network creation processes, proposing a new understanding of racial salience in business decision making. It was found that professionalization and/or legitimization becomes less accessible when the antecedents of social capital in business networks are overly credited to racial homogeneity. This can contribute towards the low efficacy rates of business support ecosystems despite no shortage of effort. These could be mitigated through a reorganization of the ecosystem to create networks that are racially-considerate as opposed to racially-qualifying.