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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.

This study examines what motivates firms to go and remain abroad despite uncertain profit potential. In a departure from probing traditional market-seeking, profit-driven motives, the authors explore how domestically driven, sociocultural motivations may shape the foreign market entry decisions of Korean commercial banks (KCBs). The authors argue that, due to the power imbalance between KCBs and their chaebol clients within the historical and cultural contexts of their relationships, KCBs' foreign market entries may depend more on their clients' presence in these markets than on their profit potential.

The authors focus on the foreign market entries of KCBs and their client firms. Using the data of 8 KCBs and their client firms belonging to the 60 business groups (chaebols) of Korea, the authors analyze 6,577 observations involving the dyadic relationship between a KCB and its client firm in 15 host countries from 2005 to 2014.

The authors find that the number of clients' subsidiaries operating in foreign markets may increase the likelihood of KCBs entering these markets. Moreover, when KCBs earn more domestic profit from client firms, the potential Korean market in the host country is greater, and the institutional distance between the host country and Korea is smaller.

In addition to the critical role of a bank-centered financing system in advancing a developing country and its firms, the authors’ findings suggest that firms should pay attention to the local diaspora and the institutional distance between the host and home countries in order to manage power-imbalanced relationships and make them sustainable.

The study contributes to the literature on foreign market entry by demonstrating how the home country's sociocultural factors may worsen the power imbalance, thereby pushing firms to make seemingly irrational decisions to go and stay abroad. That is, KCBs' foreign operations may be a way of seeking relational benefits with client firms, which would serve as a source of long-term domestic market profits. The authors’ findings thus highlight the need to consider how sociocultural factors may also shape firms' decision-making in their international business.

To understand how diaspora entrepreneurship evolves and becomes a small-scale emerging market multinational and how this process is enabled.

Case study and ethnographic methods were employed.

Diaspora entrepreneurs can act as change agents who create and penetrate markets under difficult conditions. They are less influenced by institutional voids in home and host countries when they have strong international diaspora networks that enable a connection to resources, overcoming such voids. Diaspora entrepreneurs may be resource-embedded socially in a way that creates superior competitive advantages and reduces liabilities of foreignness and of outsidership.

Diaspora entrepreneurship incorporates invisible and idiographic potential, such as social capital and knowledge networks. These are not available for other non-incumbent companies (e.g., foreign entrants) and are difficult to research due to access barriers.

Perception and active management of network-based resources is important for opportunity and business development. Management in a transition economy context requires holistic views, deep understanding, and working linkages across markets.

Transgenerational entrepreneurship and ethnic traditions are important for the community. Entrepreneurship provides continuity and identity, such as using ethnic language, as well as prosperity and solidarity that are important for supporting cultural identity.

This study connects diaspora entrepreneurship in Central Asia and emerging market multinationals that are small and medium-sized enterprises. Both are underexplored domains, but may share particular institutional settings. Growth and internationalization into a multinational enterprise with an emerging market origin, especially by women entrepreneurs, are rarely studied. This case illustrates the need to capture the processual dynamics, resources, and actor networks, including sociocultural and spatiotemporal factors for better contextualization.

The purpose of this study is to examines the pattern of linkage between Korean immigrant business community in the Kansas City area and global forces by focusing on how an immigrant community has transformed and reacted to the global trends of business transaction.

The data on Korean entrepreneurs in the Kansas City area was obtained from the semi-structured and informal interviews with Korean community leaders, Korean businessmen and customers who use Korean grocery markets in the Kansas City area. This study also utilizes documents on Korean and Asian ethnic community and neighborhood relations in news media. It analyzes entrepreneurial strategy and business transactions of Korean immigrant community and its relations to global trends using the Directory of Korean Entrepreneurs of Greater Kansas City Area in different points of time: 1990, 2006 and 2011.

The types of businesses observed in the Directory of Korean Business in Greater Kansas City area have changed significantly over time (see Table I). The number of businesses has increased from 181 in 1990 to 281 in 2006 and 197 in 2011, and the business types became diversified from 29 in 1990 to 38 in 2006 and 36 in 2011. The grocery stores and restaurants in community were adapting to global tends to survive by upscaling and diversifying items and targeting customers. Beauty aid supply business remains solid by maintaining globalized business transactions of purchasing and distribution.

Based on interviews, this study needs to be extended to other Midwestern cities and Chicago, as a global city, to objectively examine the mode of intersection between globalness and ethnic locality within immigrant communities.

This study explores specifically how a transnational community of Korean entrepreneurs in the Kansas City is reacting and adjusting to global trends by probing the strategies of each business segments of grocery store, restaurants and beauty aid supply business.

The purpose of this study is to present how a German-origin diaspora entrepreneur successfully introduces a new concept to Uzbekistan by orchestrating diaspora and local resources into a transnational diaspora venture, a kind of international new venture. Diaspora entrepreneurs can act as catalysts for market entry of innovations as they possess unique perspectives and competencies. Thus, the study increases the understanding of transnational diaspora entrepreneurship.

A single embedded case study supported with ethnographic methods was employed. The explorative strategy assisted to discover ways how the entrepreneur succeeded in entering this difficult market with a totally novel concept.

Perceived opportunity triggered the migration of the entrepreneur. Her transnational entrepreneurial competences and perspectives together with an efficient usage of various network resources in host and home country enabled a successful entry of the new venture as opposed to normal entry barriers. The study illustrates how diaspora effects can be employed for right timing and achieving first-mover advantages in diffusion of innovation and market entry.

The study contributes to the emerging stream of research on transnational diaspora entrepreneurship and introduces a unique “rich-to-emerging” diaspora venture entry in a transition economy. This is among the first catalyst cases that provide implications for the organization of entry process, diaspora entrepreneurship, and management. It represents a new form of international new ventures that succeeded where big players like Starbucks and McDonalds did not.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the antecedents of successful South Asian opportunity diaspora entrepreneurship. Furthermore, it examines the successful South Asian diaspora opportunity entrepreneurs’ (DOE) interactions with their country of origin and country of residence.

With a qualitative approach, this study employs the NVivo software to examine a set of semistructured interviews of eight South Asian diaspora entrepreneurs.

The qualitative analysis in this study suggests that a South Asian DOE with a college education, previous industry-related experience, prior startup experience, and a tendency to attribute entrepreneurship talent to training rather than birth exhibits a high-entrepreneurial venture growth rate. Furthermore, the qualitative analysis suggests that a south Asian DOE who emphasizes market analysis, accentuates building the right team of employees, and pursues adventurous choice of financing (i.e. bootstrapping or small bank) exhibits a high-entrepreneurial venture growth rate.

Due to the small sample and exploratory nature of the study, results may not be generalized. Future research is encouraged to test the robustness of the findings.

The findings of this qualitative study offer implications for immigrant individuals who might have interest in starting a new business and wonder what the ingredients of a diaspora entrepreneurship success recipe might be.

This study provides an enhanced understanding of diaspora opportunity entrepreneurship. Furthermore, it contributes to the qualitative approach by offering a novel research design to avoid common problems of researcher bias and mono-method bias.

– This chapter aims to increase our understanding on how the language diversity of multiethnic Central Asian countries and their diasporas constitutes a talent and resource-base for local and global businesses. We revisit the role of ‘language capabilities’ for boundary-spanning abilities and the particular challenges and opportunities posed by linguistically diverse contexts among diaspora members and their homeland.

– This chapter provides an overview of prior research and uses qualitative interviews and ethnographic data.

– The findings indicate that language diversity is an important multi-layered resource and a socio-economic link that allows culturally distant markets to interact and bridges the gaps across geographic boundaries. Individuals with multiple languages and migrant ties may develop alternative ways of communicating for business, such as translanguaging and cultural communication mode-shifting.

– The administrative ‘imperial’ languages are often perceived as the oppressor's instrument, however, the alternate perspective presents it as a resource for economic relations and international business development that exists in parallel to the indigenous language heritage. We introduce a concept, on diaspora ‘language portfolio’ that is a toolbox of communication assets that allows migrants to connect and operate interculturally and inter-regionally.

– We deviate from the English language dominance of the international business literature and address how another geographic and linguistic context such as the Russophone business provides a contextual lens to understand how language capabilities of diaspora members is an asset to both, their home and host nations. We illustrate how both the Russian language and the regional and minority languages offer a great potential for entrepreneurial and trade relations. By introducing a Framework of Diaspora ‘Language Portfolio’ this study underlines that minorities and diasporas are key boundary spanners and connectors in new markets and enhance the development of trade in the region.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how entrepreneurship traditions evolve in diaspora.

A qualitative multiple case study examining the role of diaspora embeddedness, extended family, ethno-religious-, cultural- and social ties and relevant structures shaping diaspora entrepreneurship.

The authors found that social ties and diaspora embeddedness create dynamism fostering entrepreneurial identity as a part of the Bukharian culture, and as a preferred career option in the context of Bukharian Jews in diaspora. Diasporic family businesses are products of culture and tradition that migrate to new locations with families and communities, not as disconnected business entities.

The ways in which families nurture a highly entrepreneurial culture that transfers across generations and contexts are context-specific and not per se generalizable to other diasporas.

Diasporans often continue their traditions and become again entrepreneurs after their settlement, or they may generate hybrid, circular solutions that allow them to employ their competences in the new contexts or connecting various contexts. This calls for transnational entrepreneurship-policymaking.

Time changes diasporas. A long-term commitment to the business environment evolves and reduces the mobility of the individual diasporan; typically the children of these migrants become more integrated and develop divergent career paths. Hence, their plans are not necessarily including family entrepreneurship creating a challenge for continuation of the original culture of entrepreneurship.

Despite a notable tradition in Jewish studies, there is limited research on Jewish entrepreneurial diaspora and its contemporary entrepreneurial identity and tradition. Furthermore, the population of Bukharian Jews is an unknown and under-explored highly entrepreneurial group that may offer instrumental views to larger diasporic audiences being concerned about maintaining notions of ethnic heritage and identity.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how ethnic migrant entrepreneurs (EMEs) utilise identity work to build legitimacy in a host country. According to optimal distinctiveness theory (ODT), legitimacy is achieved by balancing conformance and distinctiveness. This paper draws on ODT in the context of ethnic migrant entrepreneurship to examine how EMEs both fit in (conformance) and maintain their uniqueness (distinctiveness) in cross-cultural settings.

This study adopts a qualitative approach utilising semi-structured interviews to examine the identity work of EMEs from three distinct countries (Indonesia, Pakistan and South Korea (henceforth Korea)) in one host country (Malaysia).

The results show that EMEs’ identity work incorporates both the blurring and strengthening of host-home country boundaries. Building on this study’s results, the authors develop a model of identity work and three propositions regarding legitimacy building through identity in the context of ethnic migrant entrepreneurship.

Through the model and propositions, this research contributes to the identity, international entrepreneurship and ethnic migrant entrepreneurship discourse by identifying the mechanisms, focus and key features of identity work for entrepreneurs operating in cross-cultural settings. In so doing, this research also offers an alternative interpretation on the apparent divergent views around identity work in the fields of organisation (advocate isomorphism) and entrepreneurship (advocate uniqueness).