Refugee-owned small businesses: A typology for blended value creation

While it is clear that refugee-owned small businesses generate economic value, what is less understood is small businesses' role in blended value generation for ethnic/co-ethnic and local host communities. To explore this issue, we conducted interviews with 19 refugee business owners residing in New Zealand. Our findings concur with the extant literature that refugee-owned businesses generate economic, social and cultural value in their adopted countries. However, these businesses can be differentiated by their value focus; that is, whether the business' sole focus is economic or a nuanced blend, where economic value is complemented by strong social and cultural outcomes. In addition, these businesses' blended value generation is concentrated in either ethnic/co-ethnic or to local host communities. We use the findings to construct a typology of value generated by refugee-owned businesses, based on two continuums: from economic value to blended value and from ethnic/co-ethnic focus to local host focus.