Transnational and Immigrant Entrepreneurship in a Globalized World

Citation

Momparler, A. and Carmona, P. (2012), "Transnational and Immigrant Entrepreneurship in a Globalized World", Management Decision, Vol. 50 No. 8, pp. 1500-1502. https://doi.org/10.1108/00251741211262051

In times of crisis it is important to know how entrepreneurs tick and in particular the growing breed of transnational entrepreneurs (TEs) who can be a critical factor in helping to reactivate our economies. This book does just that, it brings together nine different studies of TEs which will help those who are studying the subject to clarify exactly what is going on in this very complicated area.

Within the broad spectrum of TEs we can divide them into two different groups. Group one would be the more visible, they can be easily seen on the main streets of our towns and cities. Group two would be less visible, those who have small businesses in industrial estates or offices whose history nobody knows except maybe themselves or are hidden away in official statistics.

One would have to be blind not to see the first group. For example, in a European country like Spain the Chinese are number one in setting up small businesses such as restaurants, euro shops, clothes shops, cafés … The Pakistanis have the fruit and veg shops and cyber cafés. Other nationalities have their different restaurants and food shops. English speakers from Britain, Ireland, Australia, USA … have set up language schools, Translation Companies, Language Tourism and anything else connected with languages. Spanish people, who have obviously lived abroad, have taken ideas from other countries and set up similar operations in Spain, these include Telepizza, Foster's Hollywood, Irish Pubs and the like. Spaniards have also set up franchises for many multinational chains such as Starbucks, Body Shop or Burger King.

Group two are a lot less visible in our day‐to‐day lives and can only be found in specialized studies by economists such as in this book “Transnational and immigrant entrepreneurship in a globalized world”. This group may live abroad and trade with companies from their original countries. Others may have lived abroad but now live at home and export to their host country. They may also be involved in important start‐up or high technology ventures.

These types of studies calm fears about “brain drains” when countries see their young people emigrating to other countries. The countries of origin fear the loss of their young professionals after all the money and the time the state had invested in them. Showing the positive economic benefits that can be gained from TEs, and the need for these countries to help and cultivate these potential company builders both for the country of origin and for the host countries, help to curb those fears.

As mentioned above, this book contains nine articles, each written by different authors and describing different aspects of Transnational Entrepreneurship. These studies bring together leading international scholars from a cross‐disciplinary basis to examine the economic, social, regulatory, technological, and theoretical issues related to the impact of transnational entrepreneurs on business and economic development.

In the first chapter “Researching Transnational Entrepreneurship”, Israel Droni, Benson Honig, and Ari Ginsberg claim that to develop a deeper understanding of the activities of the TE requires the use of an analytical tool capable of deciphering duel cultural perspectives and that the present theories of international or ethnic entrepreneurship do not adequately analyze the TE strategy of entrepreneurial action. The objective of the chapter is to adopt and develop an analytical framework that is particularly suited to addressing the epistemological challenges reflected in the TE phenomenon. The basis of their analytical framework is both Giddens' “Structuration” theory and the “Theory of Practice” developed by Bourdieu. They offer us a framework for the study of transnational entrepreneurship that is sufficiently robust for the investigation of a highly complex, dynamic phenomenon that crosses multiple cultural, social, economic and geographical boundaries.

Chapter two, written by Xiaohua Lin, looks at CDEs (Contemporary Diasporic Entrepreneurship) who are TEs who have lived abroad for a period of time and then decided to return to their countries of origin with the objective of setting up companies there. What's new about the contemporary diasporic community is the combination of higher levels of education, skills, and professional knowledge. Though incidences of CDEs have been noted in India, Israel, and Ireland, the most observable presence is in China and this is the market that Xiaohua concentrates on. Lin speaks about the great success that the CDEs have had in China and the reasons behind that success. These include, the Chinese Governments positive attitude towards them, the natural entrepreneurial spirit of the Chinese, the emotional attachment to their homeland, and how the CDEs use both home and host country resources.

Chapter three, written by Amalya Oliver and Kathleen Montgomery, focuses on “Transnational Scientific Entrepreneurship” (TSE). The authors claim the existence of Transnational Entrepreneurship and Transnational Science when combined together produces the potential for Scientific Entrepreneurship (SE). The result is the commercialization of inventions from the academic entrepreneur in the marketplace, which is generally conducted through firms and, more recently, also within Universities. Oliver and Montgomery say that there are specific challenges in collaborations between academia and industry, such as trust and intellectual property rights that need to be addressed.

Chapter four, “Building Effective Networks”, written by Ingred Wakkee, Peter Groenewegen and Paula Danskin Englis, examines “how TEs become immersed in their country of origin, their host country, and even the rest of the world, and what the causal relationships are between networking strategies employed by such ventures and their usage of virtual and social networks”. It looks at how the more traditional versus the more virtual organizations use the recently introduced characterizations of networks, “small world” and “scale free”. Then there are the network strategies that virtual and traditional TEs use. The authors suggest that these can be divided into two types, purposeful strategies that are characterized by a high level of strategic intent or serendipitous strategies where TEs decide to “go with the flow” and see where the network takes them. It goes on to show how virtual and traditional TEs use different strategies during the emergence of these companies in the three main processes, “opportunity recognition, gaining legitimacy, and resource building”.

In chapter five, “One World or Worlds Apart?”, Pankaj C. Patel and Betty Conklin talk about how TEs can take advantage of dealing with two different countries by focusing on the comparative advantages due to differences in social, economic and political conditions across different institutional settings. They found that TEs with greater levels of balance in bifocality (focus in two countries/institutional settings) engage in greater levels of transnational entrepreneurial activities.

“The Progression of International Students into Transnational Entrepreneurs” is discussed in chapter six. In this chapter Gerry Kerr and Francine K. Schlosser look at the potential that international students have of becoming TEs. Many international student have all the basic ingredients required which would give them clear advantages for converting into successful TEs. These ingredients include “a mobile demographic complete with a bicultural mindset and a broad spectrum of entrepreneurial options”. In times of economic crisis they show how different governments positively and negatively affect these potential TEs.

Chapter seven looks at “The Trade and Immigration Nexus in the India‐Canada Context” which was written by Margaret Walton‐Roberts. She analyzes why Canada with a 1percent population of Indian immigrants has underachieved in trade with a huge emerging economy like India. She puts it down to “not to some limitation embodied in the immigrant community but rather to the nature of the Canadian economy”, its conservative ethos towards overseas markets, the inertia effect of trade with the US, and the uneasy diplomatic relations that have existed between India and Canada.

Chapter eight looks at “Legal and Social institutions for Transnational Entrepreneurship: A Multiple Case Study in the Spanish Context”. David Urbano, Nuria Toldano, and Domingo Ribeiro‐Soriano make a case study of four TEs (“entrepreneurs traveling abroad at least twice a year and whose firms depend on regular contact with foreign countries”) who have businesses in Catalonia, Spain and who are from four different countries: Ecuador, China, Morocco, and Rumania. The conclusions that they come to are that “formal institutions” (legal, economic, business support, etc.) help to promote transnational activities but not the emergence of TEs. However, “social or informal institutions” are important in both facilitating the emergence of TEs and increasing transnational activities. The informal institutions include family, friends, extended family and professional contacts.

In conclusion, one of the disadvantages of having nine chapters of a book written by different authors or groups of authors is that there is a lot of repetition. For example, each one defines what TEs are, be it all with subtle differences, this leads to going over more or less the same ground over and over again. This is a minor disadvantage when you are talking about a subject such as “transnational Entrepreneurs” which is a growing phenomenon due to recent technological, social, and economic changes. This book makes a real contribution to understanding more about this phenomenon. Each chapter is about very different aspects of TEs and bringing these together in one book will help the academic world to get a deeper understanding of them all. Maybe it would be interesting to write a book that brought these matters into layman's terms for Governments and policy makers, explaining all this technical language, so that they grasp and appreciate the advantages for their economies when all parts of the state works in unison to promote and enhance the development of TEs.