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The Government of Korea institutionalized the World Korean Business Convention (WKBC) and the World Korean Business Network (WKBN) to promote Korean diaspora entrepreneurs’ investment in the homeland. Few studies have examined the effectiveness of the WKBC and WKBN and the critical variables affecting them. This paper aims to fill this gap by exploring important variables affecting Korean diaspora entrepreneurs’ investment in the homeland. It also seeks to examine the relationships among these variables to inquire upon a set of critical questions pertaining to Korean diaspora entrepreneurs’ investment in the homeland including the effectiveness of the WKBC and WKBN.

To achieve the above purpose, critical variables influencing Korean diaspora entrepreneurs’ investment in the homeland were identified and four hypotheses that include the inquiries pertaining to the effectiveness of the WKBC and WKBN were developed in terms of those variables. The hypotheses were empirically tested using the survey data gathered from the participants of the annual WKBC.

The current research found that Korean diaspora entrepreneurs’ evaluation of the investment climate in the homeland was not favorable. The WKBC was positively evaluated by Korean diaspora entrepreneurs willing to make investment, There is discrepancy between expectations of the WKBN’s target group (i.e. Korean diaspora entrepreneurs willing to make investment) and its performance for the group, and there is a difference between ascending and descending Korean diaspora entrepreneurs in assessment of investment value of the homeland.

A majority of studies on diaspora entrepreneurship and development have so far cast light on ascending diaspora entrepreneurs while neglecting descending diaspora entrepreneurs. In this regard, the most interesting finding of the current study to both researchers and policymakers may be the fact that descending Korean diaspora entrepreneurs assess the investment value of the homeland differently from ascending Korea diaspora entrepreneurs. The finding calls for further research on causes of the difference, and different natures of descending diaspora entrepreneurs compared to those of ascending diaspora entrepreneurs. Such research will enable policymakers to formulate and implement effective strategic diaspora policies that take the differences into consideration.

The concept of diaspora philanthropy contains the following two components: diasporas, who are individuals who live outside of their homelands but maintain a sense of identity with their home countries, and charitable giving provided by these diasporas to causes related to their hometowns. Often diaspora philanthropy happens through intermediary organizations such as hometown associations, internet-based philanthropic platforms and faith-based groups. Little research explores immigrant-owned small businesses as intermediary organizations for diaspora philanthropy. In the literature of social entrepreneurship, the theory of opportunity recognition provides insights on how do businesses identify opportunities for fulfilling social missions. However, it is uncertain whether this major theory can be applied to a specific context such as immigrant-owned small businesses. In this research, I aim to understand immigrant-owned small businesses' participation in social entrepreneurship through diaspora philanthropy, especially in responding to natural disasters. Specifically, three research questions were proposed: What role do small businesses play? What mechanisms do they use to partake in diaspora philanthropy? Moreover, what motivates them to participate?

This research uses an in-depth case study that focuses on a specific diaspora philanthropy behavior in responding to a natural disaster in the diaspora's hometown. The subject of this work is a small business owned by an immigrant in New York City, the US. To collect data on this case, the author utilized a mixed-methods design, which involves two types of qualitative data: document analysis and interview. Giving the purpose of this study, the author used thematic coding for both newspaper article data and interview data following a deductive approach.

The result shows that small businesses have an inherent advantage in building close interpersonal relationships with their customers and serve as the connector between their customers and larger philanthropic organizations. Because of their limitations on resources, small businesses collaborate with larger nonprofit organizations to do complicated philanthropic work for improved capacity. When diaspora philanthropy happens due to natural disasters in homelands, diasporas experience some level of guilt since they are not there with the people of their homeland in solidarity facing the difficulties. This guilt, which is related to cultural influences, is one of the motivations that make diasporas give to their homelands. The findings also show that the opportunity recognition theory fits well into explaining the altruistic behaviors of small businesses owned by immigrants.

A lot remains unknown about immigrant-owned small businesses, including their altruistic behaviors and participation in social entrepreneurship. This research expands the current knowledge on diaspora philanthropy by identifying the roles of small businesses, the mechanisms used by small businesses and the motivations of giving during natural disasters. This research also validates the opportunity recognition theory of social entrepreneurship in a specific context.

Within the growing study of transnational entrepreneurial practice, existing conceptualisation of diaspora entrepreneurship has often lacked engagement with the particularities of the diaspora condition. This paper seeks to advance theoretical understanding and empirical study of diaspora entrepreneurship through identifying the processes that generate diaspora entrepreneurship across economic, social and political spheres.

To analyse the relationship between the development of venture activity and diaspora (re)production, in depth, qualitative biographical analysis was undertaken with UK-based diaspora entrepreneurs embedded within the particular contexts of the Sri Lankan Tamil and Kurdish diasporas. Skilled and active diaspora entrepreneurs were purposively selected from these extreme case contexts to explore their entrepreneurial agency within and across the business, social and political realms.

Results identified key dimensions shaping the development of diaspora entrepreneurship. These comprised the role of diaspora context in shaping opportunity frameworks and the mobilisation of available resources, and how venture activity served to sustain collective diaspora identity and address diaspora interests. These findings are used to produce an analytical model of the generation of diaspora entrepreneurship to serve as a basis for discussing how heterogeneous and hybrid entrepreneurial strategies emerge from and shape the evolving diaspora context.

By placing the reproduction of social collectivity centre-stage, this paper identifies the particularities of diaspora entrepreneurship as a form of transnational entrepreneurship. This recognizes the significance of a contextualised understanding of entrepreneurial diversity within wider processes of diaspora development, which has important implications for policy and practice development in homeland and settlement areas.

The purpose of this paper is to study the way in which family ties influence the entrepreneurial preparedness of the diaspora family business owner.

In-depth interviews were carried out with 15 Cypriot family business owners hosted in various countries. The paper draws on social capital theory and uses an abductive analytical approach.

The findings of this paper illustrate that family ties coming from the family across borders play a significant role for diaspora family business owners’ entrepreneurial preparedness. Hidden values deriving from the interpersonal relationships within the family across borders drive the diaspora family business owners to learn upon self-reflection and become entrepreneurially prepared, led by both urgency and esteem.

This study provides practical implications for the entrepreneurial preparedness of diaspora family business owners and those who wish to become family business owners in a diaspora context.

This study contributes theoretically through the conceptualization of “family across borders social capital” and “diaspora entrepreneurial preparedness”. It also contributes empirically to the fields of diaspora family business, entrepreneurial learning and diaspora entrepreneurship through new knowledge regarding the role of family across borders social capital in the entrepreneurial preparedness of the diaspora family business owner.

To date, research on migration and entrepreneurship has rarely focused expat-preneurs. Based on recent developments in both fields, this paper aims to investigate the under-researched phenomenon of Chinese self-initiated expatriates who choose to temporarily live and do business abroad on their own volition.

To address this research gap, 15 in-depth semi-structured interviews with Chinese expat-preneurs living in Portugal were conducted, exposing their narratives about their multiple challenges.

The findings corroborate the theoretical need to look beyond narrow economic explanations for why individuals engage in transnational entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial itinerancy. A collective identity and ethnic community are important because they influence how opportunities are identified and pursued.

This is a qualitative and interpretative study in a limited geographical area, which does not intent to ensure generalizability. More research is needed to further understand the phenomenon of entrepreneurial itinerancy in Europe and among other ethnic communities.

The findings provide insightful inputs to Portuguese policymakers and locals on how to support ethnic entrepreneurship. Chinese expat-preneurs also benefit from understanding how to strength their ethnic social ties in connection with local communities.

This study contributes to the entrepreneurship and international mobility literatures by providing new insights into the nature and dynamics of Chinese “expat-preneurs”, including their entrepreneurial itinerancy, necessary to properly understand entrepreneurs’ diversity and assist in extending transnational entrepreneurial theory.

This paper aims to analyse the evolution of Chinese industrial ethnic clusters in Italy, by focusing on the role of social networks and the processes behind the phenomenon of Chinese worker exploitation and entrepreneur “self-exploitation”.

The case study is a sub-cluster of micro and small enterprises owned by Chinese entrepreneurs within the leather industrial district of Florence, Italy. This research adopts the following mixed methods: a small-scale survey to capture the characteristics of the sub-cluster and a social network analysis to describe cluster evolution, complemented by life-course interviews conducted with key informants and entrepreneurs.

Migrant social capital and social networks play a central role in the evolution of the case study sub-cluster. Social networks play a supportive role in migration, job creation, entrepreneurship formation and the creation of business opportunities. Simultaneously, they enhance the phenomenon of worker exploitation and entrepreneur self-exploitation. Furthermore, the more the business community grows, the more the economic performance of ethnic enterprises depends on agglomeration forces produced by the cluster.

The findings suggest a series of potential policies to upgrade the ethnic enterprises' capacities, to increase their formality and inclusion in the Italian social and economic systems and sub-cluster.

To the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first attempt to examine the evolution of social networks in relation to the phenomenon of Chinese worker exploitation and entrepreneur self-exploitation in an ethnic industrial sub-cluster.

This study aims to consider how migrants may act as channel of diffusion of knowledge which contributes to the dynamics of trade and comparative advantages of EU and MENA countries for the period 1990–2015.

Adopting an IV approach and a gravity framework to instrument for migration, the authors document how variations in stocks of migrants coming from (in) countries that are already competitive exporters of a given product impact on the probability that the destination (home) country starts to export competitively new products or succeed in exporting more intensively.

Controlling for potential confounding factors which can be correlated to knowledge flows and productivity shifts, the authors find trade-promoting effects via migration flows (mostly immigration) between the two areas, testing our hypotheses by different technology classes of products and different specifications.

The contribution of this work to the literature is threefold. First, by providing evidence on international knowledge diffusion induced by migration flows between MENA and EU regions, like no other work before, the authors document the effects of migration on trade and comparative advantages. Second, unlike standard literature on migration-trade link, the authors focus more on long-term structural changes in comparative advantages than on trade volumes. Third, we exploit how the effect of migration on margins of trade varies according to different types of goods, classified by technological level.

This study analyzes the role of migrant networks in the migration flows in relation to the educational level of the migrants and economic growth of the states of origin and destination in Brazil.

Fixed effects estimator applied to microdata.

The results show migrant networks have a significant and positive impact on migration flows of the different educational levels. The economic growth in the destination state accentuates this effect, while the economic growth in the origin state has distinct impacts according to the educational level of the new migrant.

The authors investigate the importance of migrant networks in the internal immigration within a developing country with large internal movement of people. In Brazil, the socio-economic condition of the population varies considerably in relation to its geography, which explains the country’s large internal migration flows.

This study aims to increase understanding of factors influencing the international marketing (IM) strategy of products from emerging markets (EMs) to international markets.

This study conducted case studies by collecting qualitative data through semistructured interviews with respondents from four food product companies in Bangladesh.

This study finds that the firms employ local Bangladeshi people who are knowledgeable in the company culture. They strategically focus on countries where the Bangladeshi diaspora lives and initially target them, approaching natives later. They adapt and customize products to the importers’ requirements to make them visible and increase understanding between product providers and local customers. The findings show that EM firms encounter a mentality that poor countries produce poor quality products; this mindset makes the internationalization of their business difficult.

This research contributes to international product marketing of EM firms by constructing a model of a modern people-oriented marketing strategy for food products. This study contributes to literature on culture by illustrating that the cultural dimensions of collectivism and uncertainty avoidance enhance the development of networks and trust and impact marketing strategy.

This study theorizes the importance of context and an innovation-driven modern people-oriented IM strategy that adapts to customers’ preferences for food products and emphasizes the contribution of diaspora. This research reveals that Bangladeshi firms face challenges both because customers link the country and the companies to low-quality products and because governmental regulations prevent them from establishing a local presence in other countries. This study analyzes challenges EM firms face in the process of IM and the factors affecting Bangladesh in particular.

Human capital flight from developing countries to developed nations has been rising and giving concerns to governments and scholars alike. This paper aims to explore the impact migration from Nigeria has on economic output growth by focusing on the migration rate, remittances, population growth and secondary school enrolment. This has not received adequate attention in the literature, as many papers have primarily focused on the impact of remittances on economic growth.

Leveraging on the macro-level approach to migration, remittances and the economy, this research considers the nexus among the human capital flight and output growth variables by using the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) method of analysis for time series data between 1986 and 2018.

The net migration rate from Nigeria was found from the empirical analysis to be more disadvantageous for the economy, given its negative relationship with economic growth despite the large volume of foreign incomes (remittances). It also shows that secondary school enrolment positively and significantly impacted the Nigerian growth rate in the long run.

This research has widened the use of variables by combining net migration rate, remittances from abroad, population growth rate and secondary school enrolment to obtain a more robust outcome with implications for research and practice.