Fulfilling the need of business advisory services among Swedish immigrant entrepreneurs

Purpose - Taking the entrepreneur’s perspective and a broad view of business advisory services, the purpose of this paper is to examine to what degree the need of business advisory services among Swedish start-ups, first-generation immigrants compared to non-immigrants, is fulfilled. Design/methodology/approach - The sample data consist of a unique and comprehensive firm-level database and contain telephone interviews with 2,800 Swedish start-up entrepreneurs. The study examines 20 different kinds of business advice services, in terms of both need and use. Statistical methods such as Mann-Whitney test and regression analysis are used while controlling for entrepreneurial characteristics. Findings - The findings suggest that immigrants’ compared to non-immigrants’ need for business advisory service was not fulfilled. Of the 20 different business advices, ten were fulfilled and ten were not fulfilled. Both strategic advice and operational advice were fulfilled as well as unfulfilled. Apart from ethnicity, other variables did influence the need of business advisory services. Research limitations/implications - The author was not able to make comparisons between different immigrant groups. Practical implications - This study offers an explorative approach that contributes on how business advisory services are differentially tailored between start-ups by immigrants and those by non-immigrants. It illustrates to what extent public- and/or private-funded organizations contribute to fulfilment of the needs of immigrant and non-immigrant start-ups. Originality/value - Few studies take the entrepreneur’s perspective and from such a perspective examine the fulfilment of needs of advice regarding both private and public organizations role in the area. Both the need and the use of business advisory services are studied as well as the kind of business advice that is needed.