As one of Europe's longest-established university-based business schools, the School of Management at Bradford University has worked with a number of large companies on projects as diverse as graduate training and corporate MBAs. But as Dr Khalid Hafeez, founding director of the University's Centre for Ethnic Entrepreneurship and Management (CEEM), explains, around three years ago its board began to feel a greater responsibility to "give back".

"We thought, 'what's our contribution to the local economy', especially since about half of our student population comes from the local postcode," he says. "The idea was to develop our local responsibility further; to provide a major intervention in the local economy in order to trigger regeneration and make a positive impact on quality of life, integration and cohesion. If you can help to improve the economic situation, it will help to alleviate a lot of the problems Bradford has been facing."

In practical terms, says Hafeez, this meant establishing a centre to help local, ethnic minority, small business owners find ways of improving their management technique to achieve longer-term sustainability.

He says the reason these firms need more training in management practice is largely due to their cultural background. "In the west Yorkshire region, the ethnic minority businesses have certain characteristics that are different to other major ethnic clusters in, say, London or Manchester," says Hafeez. "Many have arrived from agricultural areas of northern Pakistan—they haven't been exposed to business culture and education. They went into self-employment because they had problems finding a job when the textile mills closed down—it wasn't by choice."

Consequently, says Hafeez, a number of local small business owners lack basic business skills. It's been his remit to develop a "management toolkit" that will be both relevant and accessible. "At most business schools, the kind of management practices developed are suited only to large corporations. If you take that strategy to a newsagent, they'll think, 'what's that got to do with us'?"

Instead, the CEEM will help firms to focus on best practice in basic areas such as finance, HR, health and safety and succession planning. "We're working on bringing simple business knowledge into their day-to-day operations," says Hafeez. "If they're expecting the next generation to use their businesses to make their own living, we're asking: 'Have they put anything in place? Is there training? Are there mentors?"

Hafeez says he's as excited about the prospect of further research into ethnic minority enterprise as he is about helping local businesses. "In terms of pure academic research, we're trying to capture the complete ethnic landscape of the west Yorkshire region."

He adds: "The second generation will have access to finance and an education. It will start-up more profitable businesses rather than just make ends meet. But there is still a lot to learn about this cluster of companies. We have to learn more from the social and cultural perspective before we can put the economic perspective into context. And funding for this sort of long-term research project is a big challenge."

www.bradford.ac.uk/ceem