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The world is currently facing one of the most significant refugee crises in history, posing challenges to policymakers in host countries needing to facilitate socio-economic integration of refugees urgently. Policymakers and scholars have started shedding light on the entrepreneurial potential of refugees. Refugees confront considerable institutional barriers in their new environments. Particularly challenging is that they lose connection to their home country ecosystem through forced displacement and are not yet well-embedded in the local entrepreneurial ecosystem of the host country. The disconnection to the local ecosystem hinders refugees from accessing various resources essential to entrepreneurial activities. Against this background, this chapter illuminates the role of business incubators in integrating refugee entrepreneurs into the local entrepreneurial ecosystem, paying particular attention to relational dynamics within incubators. This study conducts explorative qualitative research with a single case study of a German business incubator for refugees. This study identifies three types of relational dynamics that characterise operation of refugee business incubators and two mechanisms constructive and descriptive to their mission. Finally, this study derives practical implications for refugee business incubators and policymakers in refugee-hosting countries.

This research aims to theorize how a critical factor, resource access, can paradoxically impact the comprehensiveness of venture location decision processes and the relationship between decision comprehensiveness and new venture performance. To do so, the authors focus on nascent entrepreneurs’ venture location decision processes and introduce resource access as a double-edged sword.

In this conceptual article, the authors draw from the strategic decision-making and resource mobilization literature to theorize about the new venture location decision-making process and its performance implications.

By uncovering the paradox of resource access, the authors propose that high levels of resource access create a paradoxical situation in which nascent entrepreneurs are less likely to use comprehensive decision processes when their benefits are at their greatest.

This work contributes to entrepreneurship research on new venture location and resource mobilization in three important ways. First, the authors advance the literature on nascent entrepreneurs’ location decision-making processes by introducing “location decision comprehensiveness” as a decision process construct and juxtaposing it with resource access to uncover the entrepreneurial decision-making process. Second, the authors develop a more nuanced theorization of the location choices made by nascent entrepreneurs instead of relying on generalized conclusions drawn from well-established corporations’ location decisions. Last, the authors extend the literature on resource mobilization in entrepreneurship by shedding light on the paradoxical aspect of resource access. While previous research has emphasized the favorable effects of resource access on new venture processes and outcomes, the authors contend that it can also negatively impact entrepreneurs’ ability to make effective decisions.

As a consequence of global changes, the landscape of immigration is changing. This brings opportunities for researching more nuanced aspects related to immigrant entrepreneurship in new contexts. The purpose of this paper is to establish the extent to which Africa-to-African immigrants leverage their social capital and human capital towards improving the success of their entrepreneurial ventures.

First-generation immigrant entrepreneurs within the Johannesburg area in South Africa were surveyed (n = 230). Instrument validity and reliability was first established, and then the hypotheses were tested using multiple regression analyses.

Hypotheses are supported insofar African immigrant entrepreneurs in South Africa rely on their structural and resource-related dimensions of social capital to achieve entrepreneurial success. Furthermore, human capital in terms of both work experience and entrepreneurial experience was found to be a significant predictor of entrepreneurial success.

There is value in developing policies that promote African immigrant entrepreneurs with higher levels of human and social capital. These African immigrants have the potential to increase the national skills base and knowledge required for successful entrepreneurship development in South Africa.

While both human capital and social capital have been associated significantly with the generic entrepreneurship literature, this paper provides an empirical contribution by focusing on the relevance of these constructs in the context of immigrant entrepreneurship from an African emerging market perspective.

Transnational entrepreneurship can be considered a new stream of research where migrant entrepreneurship and international business research fields intersect. The purpose of this paper is to offer a theoretical framework to address the following research question: How do transnational entrepreneurs (TEs) develop their competitive advantage to succeed in a global market?

Based on the strategic entrepreneurship approach and dynamic capability perspective, this paper suggests a theoretical framework to extend the understanding on how TEs may develop their competitive advantage to succeed in a global market.

The suggested theoretical framework exhibits how the social ties of TEs affects their firm performance through the mediating effect of a bundle of two organizational processes (opportunity sensing and opportunity seizing) and the moderating effect of institutional distance between countries of origin and residence.

TEs should not solely focus on their ethnic social ties. That is why this paper suggests that ethnic ties in the country of origin and the country of residence (COR) may lead to higher firm performance only if systematically used alongside nonethnic ties in the COR. Furthermore, it is crucial for TEs to understand the importance of dynamic capabilities in developing and sustaining their competitive advantage.

Based on the strategic entrepreneurship approach, this paper suggests a social tie-based model of the dynamic capability to address the theoretical void in the transnational entrepreneurship literature. The linkage between social tie and performance which has been in a black box is examined in terms of how strong and weak social ties may affect different underlying processes of TEs’ dynamic capabilities differently. In contrast to the common conceptualization of institutional distance as a negative moderator in international business literature, institutional distance is theorized as a positive moderator in the suggested theoretical model of transnational entrepreneurship.

This paper aims to add to the theorization of the gender dynamic in rural areas by investigating the motives of women who join their family firm (or their spouse's family firm) and thereby defy the demographic trend of rural flight. The context of this study is the depopulation of rural areas with the closing of basic services and relocation of the younger population, and educated women in particular, to urban areas. Consequently, rural family businesses risk failing to find successors and suffering forced closure or relocation. The empirical site of the study is rural family firms in Sweden, a context characterized by a high level of gender equality in legislation and culture but gender-conservative business structures in rural regions.

The empirical case in this paper builds on a qualitative study of nine (9) life course narratives of women entrepreneurs in a rural region of Southern Sweden who have returned to rural areas to join their family business. The authors follow the view established by gender scholars that women are active agents in navigating their lives, and their life story narratives offer insight into the considerations that inform their choice to stay or return to rural locations. In Sweden, the setting for the study, gender equality is widely supported by legislation, policy and institutional frameworks and popular understanding of gender relations. In contrast to the gender-progressive policies of Sweden at large, women's entrepreneurship in rural regions of Sweden tends to follow traditional gender hierarchies and face similar constraints as in rural areas of other countries. The juxtaposition of these competing sets of ideals makes Sweden an important and interesting place to study and draw insights from the experiences of women entrepreneurs.

The findings reveal that women who choose to join rural family firms view them primarily in a positive light and see this choice as aligned with their need for professional flexibility and assertiveness, rewarding relationships, and a calm, secure, well-balanced life. Theoretically, the study implies that women choosing to engage in rural family firms seek non-material benefits, such as work–life balance and social support, and may be driven in part by a sense of psychological ownership that extends to the rural community.

The findings provide novel insights on women as active agents in navigating their lives and the intrinsic (e.g. alignment of personal values) and extrinsic (e.g. community support) motives that inform their decisions. The study also raises questions regarding how women perceive themselves as “fitting in” to rural settings and to what extent the sense of security within these settings that the women describe may be contingent upon factors such as their families' embeddedness within the community as well as their conformity to the local social norms.

Literature on immigrant and ethnic minority entrepreneurship almost exclusively focusses on the west, while neglecting other world regions. This neglect is problematic not only because international migration is on the rise outside the west, but also because it reveals an implicit ethnocentrism and creates particular presumptions about the nature of ethnic minority entrepreneurship that may not be as universally valid as is often presumed. The purpose of this paper is to examine ethnic minority entrepreneurship in non-western contexts to critically assess two of these presumptions, namely that it occurs in the economic margins and within clear ethnic community boundaries.

The authors draw on academic literature (including the authors’ own) to develop two case descriptions of ethnic minority entrepreneurship outside the west: the Mennonites in Belize and the Chinese in Cambodia. For each case, the authors describe the historic entrepreneurial trajectory, i.e. the historical emergence of entrepreneurship in light of relevant community and society contexts.

The two cases reveal that, in contrast to characterisations of ethnic minority entrepreneurship in the west, the Mennonites in Belize and the Chinese in Cambodia have come to comprise the economic upper class, and their business activities are not confined to ethnic community boundaries.

The paper is the first to elaborate the importance of studying ethnic minority entrepreneurship outside the west, both as an aim in itself and as a catalyst to work towards a more neutral framework.