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1 – 10 of 753Jennifer M Sequeira and Abdul A Rasheed
The central role of networks in advancing organizational and individual goals is well accepted (Adler & Kwon, 2002; Hite & Hesterly, 2001) in the management and sociology…
Abstract
The central role of networks in advancing organizational and individual goals is well accepted (Adler & Kwon, 2002; Hite & Hesterly, 2001) in the management and sociology literatures. Networks are made up of two distinct types of ties: strong ties and weak ties. Strong ties refer to the network relationships that are close, stable and binding (Ibarra, 1993), as opposed to weak ties, that are more superficial and lacking in emotional investment. Network theory, however, suggests that strong ties may not provide the most beneficial opportunities for an individual/organization (Burt, 1997; Coleman, 1988) and conclude that in order for a business to succeed the entrepreneur must have a network made up of weak ties.
Nastaran Simarasl, Kaveh Moghaddam and David W. Williams
The purpose of this paper is to investigate aspiring immigrant opportunity (AIO) entrepreneurs' start-up location decisions.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate aspiring immigrant opportunity (AIO) entrepreneurs' start-up location decisions.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors used conjoint analysis to explore 1,264 location decisions nested within 79 highly educated, first-generation AIO entrepreneurs.
Findings
The authors found that although government support positively influences business location decisions, network support decreases the perceived benefits of government support for AIO entrepreneurs. Furthermore, locations with high costs of doing business are unattractive to AIO entrepreneurs, but financial capital access through ethnic and nonethnic sources in these locations enhances the appeal of high-cost locations.
Research limitations/implications
The generalizability of the findings to AIO entrepreneurs should be considered with caution. Future research should longitudinally examine immigrant opportunity entrepreneurs' location decisions and their implications for their start-up and community-level performance outcomes. The authors also encourage replication of the study.
Practical implications
The findings of this study have implications for AIO entrepreneurs who intend to make start-up location decisions. Also, government policymakers can use the findings of this study to better attract AIO entrepreneurs to different locations.
Originality/value
By integrating ethnic enclave theory and location theory, this research contributes to theory and practice about immigrant opportunity entrepreneurs' start-up location decisions which are currently underexplored in the immigrant entrepreneurship literature.
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Charles Braymen and Florence Neymotin
– The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of immigrant and ethnic enclaves on the success of entrepreneurial ventures as measured by firm profits and viability.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of immigrant and ethnic enclaves on the success of entrepreneurial ventures as measured by firm profits and viability.
Design/methodology/approach
Data on entrepreneurs and their new firms were provided by the Kauffman Foundation and covered the years 2004-2008. These firm-level data were linked to Census 2000 Summary Files at the ZIP Code level and were used to empirically investigate the effect of enclaves.
Findings
The paper found a statistically significant negative effect of immigrant representation in an area on firm profitability. This effect operated on native, rather than immigrant, firm owners, which suggested that native-owned firms locating in immigrant enclaves may experience difficulty assimilating the benefits that enclaves offer.
Practical implications
Cultural connections within local communities play a key role in the success of new businesses. Potential firms should recognize the importance of these connections when making firm location decisions. Likewise, the findings suggest that connections within local communities should be considered when designing aid programs.
Originality/value
The authors used a unique measure of enclave representation to incorporate both immigrant, as well as ethnic, representation in the local area. The authors examined the effect of immigration on both immigrant- and native-owned firms in order to provide a broader scope and a more complete understanding of the effects of immigration on entrepreneurial ventures.
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Diego Campagnolo, Catherine Laffineur, Simona Leonelli, Aloña Martiarena, Matthias A. Tietz and Maria Wishart
Against the theoretical backdrop of the embeddedness and the resilience literatures, this paper investigates if and how SMEs' planning for adversity affects firms' performance.
Abstract
Purpose
Against the theoretical backdrop of the embeddedness and the resilience literatures, this paper investigates if and how SMEs' planning for adversity affects firms' performance.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper develops hypotheses that investigate the link between the risk management of immigrant-led and native-led SMEs and their performance and draw on novel data from a survey on 900 immigrant- and 2,416 native-led SMEs in 5 European cities to test them.
Findings
Immigrant-led SMEs are less likely to implement an adversity plan, especially when they are in an enclave sector. However, adversity planning is important to enhance the growth of immigrant-led businesses, even outside a crisis period, and it reduces the performance gap vis-à-vis native-led businesses. Inversely, the positive association between adversity planning and growth in the sample of native entrepreneurs is mainly driven by entrepreneurs who have experienced a severe crisis in the past.
Originality/value
This paper empirically uses planning for adversity as an anticipation stage of organizational resilience and tests it in the context of immigrant and native-led SMEs. Results support the theoretical reasoning that regularly scanning for threats and seeking information beyond the local community equips immigrant-led SMEs with a broader structural network which translates into new organizational capabilities. Furthermore, results contribute to the process-based view of resilience demonstrating that regularly planning for adversity builds a firm's resilience potential, though the effect is contingent on the nationality of the leaders.
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Since the widespread adoption of the concept, transnational theorizing has attended to inequalities with regard to legal status, education, travel, and access to capital to…
Abstract
Purpose
Since the widespread adoption of the concept, transnational theorizing has attended to inequalities with regard to legal status, education, travel, and access to capital to understand the experience of migrant populations. This issue has become especially pertinent in recent years, as a growing body of journalistic and scholarly attention has been devoted to a new group of transnationals who work as entrepreneurs, professionals, and financiers involved in high tech and other cutting-edge economic activities. Regarded as among the world’s most powerful engines of economic growth and innovation, these entrepreneurs enjoy unprecedented levels of income, state-granted privileges (including permission to work), and access to elite institutions. Because of their level of resources, some observers contend that this group represents a fundamentally new category of immigrants distinct not only from labor migrants but also from merchants, professionals, and technicians.
Methodology/approach
To better understand their experience, this chapter draws on in-depth interviews and ethnographic research to compare two groups of Israeli immigrants living in Western societies: high-tech entrepreneurs and enclave entrepreneurs. Focusing on their economic and collective lives, it identifies similarities and differences among the two.
Findings
Conclusions suggest that the mostly male high-tech migrants do enjoy incomes, contacts, and access to travel that far exceed those available to labor and skilled migrants. Moreover, infotech immigrants are not dependent upon contacts with local co-ethnics that are vital for the survival of most other migrant populations. However, the communal, identity-related and familial concerns of infotech migrants are not completely amenable to their considerable resources. Accordingly, as they address these matters, their experience reveals significant similarities to those of migrants bearing a less privileged status.
Research implications
Collective, familial and identificational issues play central roles in shaping patterns of work and travel among high-tech transnational entrepreneurs. As such, these issues deserve continued attention in studies of global migration and work.
Originality/value
Research is based on a multi-sited ethnographic study of Israeli enclave and infotech entrepreneurs.
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Eduardo Picanço Cruz, Roberto Pessoa Queiroz Falcao and Cesar Ramos Barreto
The purpose of this paper is to analyze Brazilian entrepreneurial communities in Florida, through the capitals theory approach.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to analyze Brazilian entrepreneurial communities in Florida, through the capitals theory approach.
Design/methodology/approach
By adopting a comparative case study approach, the researchers conducted 80 in-depth interviews with Brazilian entrepreneurs in two different communities – Pompano Beach (Miami area) and Orlando, Florida. Data triangulation was performed through interviews with community stakeholders, secondary sources of data and surveys.
Findings
Authors propose a framework of 27 contexts, based on immigrant entrepreneurs’ capital provisions. Evidence points to different evolutionary paths of the two communities of Brazilian immigrants that were compared. Some of these contexts were found in other ethnicities from extant literature, which shows that it might be generalizable to other cases.
Research limitations/implications
The limitations relate to the fact that the comparative study was conducted in one ethnic group. Nevertheless, the paper brings insights to support future studies on immigrant and ethnic entrepreneurship as a building block for future comparative studies on other immigrant communities.
Practical implications
The work presents a guideline for future entrepreneurs in Florida.
Social implications
Implications of practice will arise after further studies in the contexts of economic, human and social capital. The cases of successful immigrant communities enlightened by the capitals theory might be useful to newly born ethnic enclaves.
Originality/value
The originality of the paper lies on the comparison of two entrepreneurial communities of the same ethnicity in Florida, showing different behaviors due to the internal and environmental factors. Moreover, the Brazilian entrepreneur’s particularities add up to the general theory of immigrant or ethnic entrepreneurship.
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– The purpose of this paper is to employ enclave economy in the perspective of economic sociology to explain the existence and process of the Thai enclave in Hong Kong.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to employ enclave economy in the perspective of economic sociology to explain the existence and process of the Thai enclave in Hong Kong.
Design/methodology/approach
In-depth interviews and case studies are employed in relation to Thai restaurant and grocery shop owners and employees in Hong Kong.
Findings
This study is an attempt to explain the clustering of Thai ethnic small businesses in Kowloon City through a discourse on the ethnic enclave economy. The Thai migrant enclave in Hong Kong is explored with dimensions of segregation, namely evenness, exposure, clustering, concentration and centralization (Massey and Denton’s, 1988). This study suggests that these Thai enclave businesses have two differentials compared to the findings of Zhou (1992) in Chinatown restaurants in New York.
Social implications
The findings provide evidences for social workers, migrant associations and policy makers in developing ideas of ethnic business enabling. There should be wide range of supporting and welfare policies for the empowerment of migrants and minority ethnic groups. An immigrant enclave should no longer be regarded as a ghetto for many business chances can be found there.
Originality/value
Two ethnic economy development differentials are developed. First, ethnicity similarity between the minority group and the majority ethnic enables ethnic business accessing earlier to an interethnic clientele from wider society. Second, internal factors of the ethnic enclave and external factors of the wider society have constrained the diversification of ethnic business.
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Xiping Shinnie, Thomas Domboka and Charlotte Carey
The conceptual framework of Multicultural Hybridism is adopted to reflect the emerging themes of transnationalism and superdiversity in the context of ethnic minority migrant…
Abstract
The conceptual framework of Multicultural Hybridism is adopted to reflect the emerging themes of transnationalism and superdiversity in the context of ethnic minority migrant entrepreneurs breaking out of their ethnic enclaves into mainstream economy. It is constructed as an extension of Mixed Embeddedness theory (Kloosterman, 2006), given that ‘Multicultural Hybrid’ (Arrighetti, Daniela Bolzani, & Lasagni, 2014) firms display stronger resilience with a higher survival rate than enclaved businesses (Kloosterman, Rusinovic, & Yeboah, 2016). With further integration of incremental diversification typology (Lassalle & Scott, 2018), the current study adopts Multicultural Hybridism as a lens to explore the opportunity recognition capabilities of transnational, migrant entrepreneurs who are facilitated by the hybridity of opportunity recognition (Lassalle, 2018) from linking host-country and home-country cultures. The hybridity of opportunity recognition focuses on access to markets and resources between transnational ethnic and local multicultural mainstream markets. Through the theoretical lens of Multicultural Hybridism, interviews with 16 Birmingham-based Chinese migrant entrepreneurs have been analysed to shape a dynamic understanding of the multifaceted concept of breakout in a superdiverse and transnational context. The multilayered interpretation of breakout provides an enhanced understanding of the diversity of hybridism between transnational ethnic and local multicultural mainstream markets. This is seen from the perspectives of firm growth and social integration in the current locations and future spaces of transnational migrant entrepreneurs. It goes beyond the narrow imagination of breakout as an economic assimilation process, avoiding the singular conceptualisation of the host-country mainstream market as the only breakout destination for transnational ethnic entrepreneurs.
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The study aims to explore migrant entrepreneurship in a hitherto overlooked demographic, namely, migrants who have moved away from core-states and towards an economically less…
Abstract
Purpose
The study aims to explore migrant entrepreneurship in a hitherto overlooked demographic, namely, migrants who have moved away from core-states and towards an economically less developed area. In particular, the study aims to critically evaluate to what extent mainstream theories and findings regarding migrants' ethnic division of labour are applicable in such an “upside down” migratory context.
Design/methodology/approach
The study qualitatively analyses 41 privileged core-state (UK, USA and Germany, among others) migrant entrepreneurs who have migrated to Wroclaw, Poland, and positions these findings against a second subject group of 24 migrant entrepreneurs from periphery-states (namely, Ukraine and Belarus).
Findings
The study finds that, while the situations of the periphery-state subject group largely lend support to the mainstream literature of migrant entrepreneurship, for those from the core-states subject group it is an altogether different story, whereby these migrants were found to be less likely to employ co-ethnic labour and, instead, were more likely to opt for native, Polish labour.
Research limitations/implications
The study's findings begin to question the universality of migrant entrepreneurship theories which have been formulated within mainstream (semi-)periphery-to-core dominant-subordinate contexts. This, in turn, carries implications for policymakers outside of core-states who may need to carefully consider if such theories are applicable to their specific contexts.
Originality/value
This study not only helps to address a gap in the literature surrounding migrant entrepreneurship within Poland but also a gap within the wider literature in terms of migrant entrepreneurship outside of core-state contexts.
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Esi A. Elliot, Yazhen Xiao and Elizabeth Wilson
– The purpose of this paper is to develop a more thorough understanding of cognitive social capital (shared representations) building in a multicultural marketing context.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to develop a more thorough understanding of cognitive social capital (shared representations) building in a multicultural marketing context.
Design/methodology/approach
An ethnographic study with in-depth interviews and observations are used to explore how Chinese entrepreneurs utilize cultural metaphors to build their cognitive social capital in the USA. Both Chinese entrepreneurs and their American stakeholders (consumers and business associates) are interviewed.
Findings
The three themes from the findings are cultural conceptual blending, frame shifting with stereotype dilution and metaphor conversion. These form the sub-processes of an overall process the authors name “cross-cultural shifting.” The use of visual and verbal cultural metaphors by the Chinese entrepreneurs leads to conceptual blending, a process of blending of elements and relations from various scenarios in the mind. A frame shifting and stereotype dilution follows, culminating in the conversion of the cultural metaphors into the deep (universally recognized) metaphors of resource and connection.
Research limitations/implications
Given that metaphors are one manifestations of culture and also effective for communicating universally, they play a role in cognitive social capital building in a multicultural context. This exposition calls for further research the utilization of cultural metaphors in international marketing.
Practical implications
The variability in communication and comprehension of business stakeholders from different cultures influence their cognitive social capital building (cooperative behavior to exchange resources). This makes it imperative for multicultural marketers to understand the use of cultural metaphors to enhance cognitive social capital in a multicultural context.
Originality/value
This exposition on cross-cultural frame shifting will result in improved knowledge of the role of cultural metaphors in enhancing multicultural understanding, shared representations and cognitive social capital in international marketing.
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