Search results

By combining manifold approaches from migrant entrepreneurship and family business studies, the purpose of the paper is to shed some light upon the contextual features of motivation, resources, generational pathways of Turkish migrant family entrepreneurs in Berlin – through the lens of a mixed and multiple embeddedness approach.

An explorative research design, based on an eclectic theoretical framework and on purposive sampling, combines qualitative in-depth interviews/content analysis and on-site observation resulting in an almost ethnographic assessment of selected case studies of Turkish migrant family entrepreneurs (concerning age (min. 20 years), size (15+ employees) and currently at a stage of succession).

The results show that despite specific strategies vary – four circumstances hold true for all cases: (1) firm trajectories were characterized by little strategic planning and mostly trail-and error processes in the past and business survival is highly dependent on owner families; (2) owner families heavily relied on personal, family and collective resources, not benefiting from promotion programmes or micro-funding measures for SMEs; (3) owner families have actively developed their (mixed) embeddings during the growth of their migrant business beyond the single ethnic group at various spatial scales; (4) succession adds another layer of context – what we call here multiple embeddedness – with ambivalent effects: emerging potentials and conflicts between the preceding and succeeding generation.

Results have shown that is it necessary to set up both: customized funding opportunities for migrant start-ups in general and succession consulting for migrant family entrepreneurs in particular. Given the magnitude of family migrant entrepreneurs and the accelerating migration patterns in most Western European countries, there is urgent need for such measures.

Family entrepreneurship has been often discussed without a migration perspective, neither taking a systematic look at pertinent motivation, resources, and future trajectories nor context. Migrant entrepreneurship studies barely take the family or family-specific issues (e.g. succession) into account, and mainly deal with the integration or economic aspects. Our mixed and multiple embeddedness approach allows for a holistic view on transgenerational migrant family entrepreneurship by integrating both socio-spatial (actor, family, network, micro, meso, macro) and multi-generational contexts (preceding, succeeding).

This paper aims to review the immigrant entrepreneurship literature to locate how researchers consider embeddedness to home and host countries beyond the “embedded” or “not” dichotomy.

The paper conducts a systematic literature review. The authors found 106 articles in the Scopus and Web of Science databases, using a structured search and selection protocol.

Few articles perceive embeddedness openly as a gradual phenomenon. However, articles in the review use different approaches for considering relative levels of embeddedness, such as depth of social ties. In addition, some articles take a dual perspective or make multi-contextual comparisons to acknowledge immigrant entrepreneurs’ embeddedness levels. These articles emphasise embeddedness as a gradual phenomenon to understand the complexity of immigrant entrepreneurs’ contextualisation better. Based on the review, the paper develops a model, considering embeddedness as an emergent result of the immigrants’ engagement with spaces, networks, markets and institutions of a given home or host context. It also accounts for the dynamic interaction between contextual factors as embeddedness levels change.

The paper has located all relevant papers in the used databases. However, the systematic review protocol naturally limits its scope. Nevertheless, the developed model based on the review helps researchers develop a more comprehensive understanding of embeddedness and possibly ask novel questions.

This paper can help policymakers improve their policies for the progressive social integration of immigrants, as it helps consider different embeddedness levels.

Researchers mainly consider individuals’ embeddedness as either “embedded” or “not.” However, we can also understand embeddedness at various levels, e.g. partial, increasing/decreasing and gradual. Significant changes occur in the embeddedness of individuals during immigration. Additionally, contextual relations intertwine immigrants’ entrepreneurial activity over time. The paper reviews embeddedness in the immigrant entrepreneurship literature, searching beyond the dichotomic use of embeddedness. Then, it develops a theoretical understanding of embeddedness levels.

This article is the editorial for the special issue on “Entrepreneurial Families in Business Across Generations, Contexts and Cultures”. We aim to develop a road map that can help academics and practitioners navigate the findings of the articles contained in this special issue. We also suggest future lines of research around the topic of entrepreneurial families in business.

We develop a conceptual model for interpreting and understanding entrepreneurial families in business across contexts and time.

Our conceptual model highlights the importance of context and time when conducting research on entrepreneurial families in business.

The findings in this special issue will be of relevance for decision makers who tailor policies that embrace different economic and social actors, including entrepreneurial families.

This editorial and the articles that make up this special issue contribute to family business research by contextualising the phenomenon of entrepreneurial families in business. We propose a new holistic perspective to incorporate context and time in the study of entrepreneurial families that own, govern and manage family firms over time.

This study explores how the family influences the entrepreneurial orientation (EO) process in immigrant businesses.

The paper draws on inductive multiple-case studies using 34 in-depth interviews. This paper relies on three cases of immigrant entrepreneurs originating from Mexico and Colombia that established firms in Sweden.

The results suggest that EO development trajectories vary in the presence of family roles (i.e. inspirers, backers and partners), resulting in the immigrant family business configurations of family-role-influenced proactiveness, risk-taking and innovation.

The immigrant family configurations drive three EO-enabling scenarios: (1) home-country framing, (2) family backing and (3) transnational translating. Immigrant family dynamics facilitate the development of EO over time through reciprocal interaction processes across contexts. This study indicates that, through family dynamics, EO develops as mutually interactive processes between the immigrant entrepreneur's family in the home and host countries.

Although the issues related to the motivation of entrepreneurs have been widely studied, there is a less study focussing on the immigrant women’s entrepreneurial motivation under challenging environment such as COVID-19. Existing studies on entrepreneurs’ motivations mainly adapt the concepts that have often been developed in male-dominated paradigm. According to Shmailan (2016), male entrepreneurs focus on making sure costs are under control and are more profit driven. Women seek to make social contributions and want to ensure their quality. Some of the literature suggests that men are inclined to start businesses because of financial considerations and are more likely to be pulled into entrepreneurship. Conversely, women are likely to start business because of lifestyle issues and are more likely to be pushed into self-employment (Clain, 2000; Georgellis & Wall, 2005; Takahashi, Lourenço, Sander, & Souza, 2014).

This chapter focuses on the motivation of immigrant females in developed economies and what makes them continue especially during difficult times such as recent crisis ‘new normal’, COVID-19 pandemic. The study explores the challenges ethnic female entrepreneurs are facing and what motivated them to continue. The study also seeks their responds and strategies during challenging time such as the pandemic. The findings indicate that women often pursuit business opportunities to satisfy social needs, rather than focussing on traditional business outcomes such as growth or profit. The study found a stronger desire to contribute to a society, community and family’s needs among female founders in the UK . The immigrant female entrepreneurs have shown strong resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis.

This perspective article aims to summarise the understanding of the link between regional development and family business and explore potential pathways for further investigations.

This study employed a scoping review methodology which attempts to explore a new topic of study and unveil its main concepts and relationships.

This study emphasises the need to enhance the cross-fertilisation of knowledge to bridge the gap between studies on regional development and family business. In addition to the traditional research pathways towards discerning the impact of formal and informal institutional contexts and economic and geographical locations on family business behaviour and performance, this perspective article encourages future researchers to delve into the regional-level mechanisms through which family businesses can influence and contribute to regional economic and social outcomes.

This perspective study employs a context theorising lens to examine the connection between regional development and family business.

This study investigates the role of transnational mixed-embeddedness when transnational entrepreneurial firms (TEFs) become internationalized. First-generation immigrant entrepreneurs who maintain business arrangements in their home and host countries own TEFs. In many cases, they internationalize from emerging economies to advanced economies. Nevertheless, this study focuses on TEF cases that internationalize from an advanced to an emerging economy, which prior transnational entrepreneurship studies have largely overlooked.

This research uses a qualitative approach based on six TEF case studies from Canada and the UK venturing into China to explore TEFs' internationalization.

The case studies explore the elements that constitute TEFs' cognitive and relational embeddedness—two main types of embeddedness—in home and host countries and how TEFs exploit such embeddedness for their internationalization. The results suggest that high levels of transnational mixed-embeddedness help TEFs reduce resource and institutional distance barriers in home countries, thereby assisting their internationalization. A framework that visualizes the role of transnational mixed-embeddedness in TEFs' internationalization and novel categorizations of transnational mixed-embeddedness is proposed.

Although there has been a growing demand for research on the emergence of internationalized smaller firms, there have been few empirical efforts on TEFs' internationalization. It is still unclear how TEFs internationalize differently than homegrown entrepreneurial firms. This study fills this gap in transnational entrepreneurship literature by examining the influence of transnational mixed-embeddedness on TEFs' internationalization.

Recent years have seen a wave of immigration in western countries. Entrepreneurship can foster refugees’ integration in the labour market. Hence, the authors observe an emergence of incubators with social purpose, addressing the key challenges of refugee entrepreneurs. The purpose of this paper is to look at the particularities and the impact of business incubation on entrepreneurial development and embeddedness of refugee entrepreneurs in the host country by applying the theoretical lens of mixed embeddedness theory.

This paper is based on a qualitative case study approach exploring one business incubation model for refugee entrepreneurs in Germany. For a multi-stakeholder perspective, the data were collected through a participatory focus group workshop and semi-structured interviews of refugee entrepreneurs and incubator stakeholders (e.g. incubator management, mentors and partners) contributing to the incubation. The data collection extends over the duration of five months of the incubation programme.

The empirical results emphasise the impact of the business incubator on refugee entrepreneur’s development and embeddedness. In this analysis, the authors identify key themes of a particular incubation process addressing the lack of embeddedness and barriers to refugee entrepreneurs in the host country. From the results, the authors elaborate a particular business incubation process framework of refugee entrepreneurs.

The findings enhance the understanding how business incubation contributes to the embeddedness of refugee entrepreneurs in their new hosting environment. Thus, this research contributes to the existing literature by extending incubation model frameworks towards refugee entrepreneurship and embeddedness perspectives. Furthermore, the study emphasises the role of the incubator in the context of the dimensions of the mixed embeddedness of the refugee entrepreneurs.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relevance of the mixed embeddedness thesis (Kloosterman, 2010; Rath and Kloosterman, 2002) to businesses with a more transnational mode of operation.

Interviews with the owner managers of a sample 24 Vietnamese businesses in London were undertaken to develop an understanding of how micro (individual resources: social, financial and cultural/human capital, and history of migration), meso (local, regional and national markets) and macro (politico-institutional) factors in the UK and overseas influenced business development.

The findings illustrate how business development is influenced not just by the interaction of the local (UK) opportunity structure and the entrepreneur’s resources, as suggested by the mixed embeddedness thesis, but also by institutional regimes, economies and markets in key countries of the diaspora, and the interaction of these. The extent to which new transnational opportunities can be exploited, however, depends on access to the necessary local and transnational forms of capital.

The empirical evidence presented is used to present a re-working of the mixed embeddedness thesis to provide a framework for understanding the drivers of transnational entrepreneurship.

The paper presents new empirical knowledge of transnational activity amongst the UK Vietnamese business community – a little known refugee community. Conceptually, the paper offers a theoretical development of the mixed embeddedness thesis to enable it to provide an explanation of transnational entrepreneurship amongst new migrant communities.