Entrepreneurial gain,cultural similarity and transnational entrepreneurship

The aim of this article is to analyse the factors affecting the motivations of immigrant entrepreneurs to generate an entrepreneurial gain (positive impact on home and host countries). We consider that positive reasons for emigrating can increase transnational entrepreneurship and mutual benefits for both societies. To test this hypothesis we present a model using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM). This model explains the relations between motivations, cultural similarities, institutions and transnational linkage potentials. We designed an ad hoc search of Argentinean entrepreneurs established in Spain, both as EU citizens and without legal EU status, using online social networks. We applied an online questionnaire to 214 such entrepreneurs. We conclude that institutional rules (formal and informal) greatly influence the location decisions of firms and immigrant entrepreneurs’ motivations for starting transnational business because they provide the frame for the development of profitable opportunities.     

Negotiating cultural and socio-economic flows in the era of Belt and Road Initiatives: An introductory overview

This introductory chapter provides a brief overview of the development of the Belt and Road Initiatives that comprises 6 BRI corridors. It explores the reasons behind the launching and promoting of the BRI by the Mainland Chinese government. The initiative by President Xi Jinping is, in part, the fulfillment of the China Dream and his focus on the “Community of Shared Future for Mankind.” In this sense, BRI provides a platform for Mainland Chinese business community and individuals to move out of the comfort of Mainland Chinese society and embark on economic and cultural connectivity with business community and the Chinese Diaspora in the global world. At the same time, BRI also serves as a platform for the global business and Chinese community to reach into China. As such, BRI could be regarded as a soft power and a cultural power that facilitate people-to-people connectivity and enhance sociocultural and economic activities along the BRI flowscape. The papers in this volume each provides a case study of how BRI serves as a soft and cultural power that enables the individuals and the business corporations to expand in their sociocultural and economic connectivity.     

Taiwanese Immigrant Entrepreneurs in Canada and Transnational Social Space

This article explores the migration of Taiwanese immigrant entrepreneurs to Canada and their transnationalism. Their presence in Canada is documented and described with statistical data on their demographic characteristics, human capital, and economic capital. An assessment of their transnationalism is provided by primary qualitative data gathered through in‐depth interviews. Overall, the review of the literature on Taiwanese migration to various countries, and their transnationalism, indicates that research has primarily been conducted in Australia and the United States, while it remained understudied in Canada. The article makes a case for contextualizing Taiwanese entrepreneurial migration in terms of a global immigration marketplace and the specific business migration programmes in Australia, United States, and Canada. Further, the article argues for the appropriateness of conceptualizing these Taiwanese entrepreneurs as operating within the theoretical framework of transnational social space. The findings on transnational social space include the importance of transnational familial networks, transnational business circuits, and transmigration. Transnational familial networks constitute a form of “capital” as the dispersal is a “resource”. The transnational business circuits include three types: (1) Asian production‐North American distribution; (2) retail chains; and (3) import‐export, all spatially distributed with their multiple national sites. In selected areas of the presentation and discussion of the data the policy implications of the findings are explored. These include discussion of the implications of this transnationalism on Canadian policies such as immigration, multiculturalism, business development, international trade, economic development, and citizenship. There is clearly a lack of harmonization among migration policy and other social and economic policies in Canada. While Canadian multiculturalism policy facilitates transnationalism, Canadian citizenship policy is shown to conflict with and discourage transnational practices.     

Immigrant Entrepreneurs: The Identification of Foreign Market Opportunities

Building on the very few studies that examine how immigrant entrepreneurs identify opportunities to conduct business in foreign markets, this article explores how Italian immigrant entrepreneurs in Australia identify such opportunities. Relying on social network theory (Patel and Conklin, 2009), international business research indicates that social ties, including kinship and ethnic ties, facilitate the flow of information that enables entrepreneurs to identify opportunities (Ellis, 2011; Hayton, Chandler and DeTienne, 2011). This study finds that the Italian immigrant entrepreneurs prefer to receive information about business opportunities from trusting, social ties, particularly country of origin (Italy) regional based ethnic ties, rather kinship ties for fear of damaging the relationship. However both first and second generation immigrants do use kinship ties to gain knowledge about Italian market conditions. Implications for policy and practice, limitations of the study and ideas for future research are also presented.     

In pursuit of capital: The charismatic turn among the Chinese managerial and professional class in Malaysia

This article explores a so far neglected dimension of the ongoing debate on the relationship between the politically contested position of the ethnic Chinese and their dominant role in the economies of Southeast Asia in general and in Malaysia in particular. While the prominence of the ethnic Chinese in the business life of Malaysia is ubiquitous, they also seem to be the engine of the striking growth of the Christian community, in particular the Pentecostal-Charismatic groups. This ‘charismatic turn’, it has been argued, reflects a major shift in the social position and power relations among the ethnic groups and the consolidation of the position of the Malaysian Chinese in the modern Malaysian nation state. This article critically reappraises this ‘empowerment thesis’ by analyzing the opportunities that conversion to Christianity and membership of Pentecostal-Charismatic groups offer to Malaysian Chinese business people, managers and professionals. In particular, this article identifies the forms of capital (in a Bourdieuan sense) involved and analyzes how these forms of capital are utilized and imbued with meaning in the interface of religion and business.     

Stepping‐Stone to Intergenerational Mobility? The Springboard,Safety Net,or Mobility Trap Functions of Korean Immigrant Entrepreneurship for the Second Generation1

Much research has viewed immigrant entrepreneurship positively because of its reputed role in immigrant economic adaptation. With the growing professionalization of children of Korean immigrant proprietors, small business ownership is seen as a stepping‐stone to intergenerational mobility. To assess whether immigrant entrepreneurship serves as springboard to upward mobility for the second generation, this article compares the educational and occupational achievements between children of entrepreneurs and children of professionals. The comparisons reveal that a higher proportion of children of professionals attended selective colleges, obtained professional occupations, and earned competitive salaries. Results from multiple regression analyses also indicate that entrepreneurship was not a good predictor of college selectivity and earnings for the second generation. Nevertheless, children of entrepreneurs attained comparable educational and occupational achievements as those of children of professionals, suggesting that rapid financial security through entrepreneurship can replicate similar residential and educational opportunities for children of entrepreneurs. While the springboard and safety net functions of small business on intergenerational mobility are salient, in some circumstances, obligations to help out in a family business can lead to personal sacrifice on the part of children of entrepreneurs, constraining their educational and occupational choices and leading some toward downward mobility.     

Transnational migrant entrepreneurship,gender and family business

Despite increased academic attention paid to migration flows in Europe, the gendered nature of transnational migrant entrepreneurial journeys within the context of a family business remains under‐researched. We address this gap by investigating how transnational spaces allow women to challenge dominant ideas about their roles, and to claim legitimacy by opening branches of their family business abroad. With extensive longitudinal evidence collected over a seven‐year period, we showcase four biographical narratives of women operating transnational family businesses in the UK that had originated in Eastern Europe. Adopting this novel longitudinal approach, we provide insights into how these transnational migrant women entrepreneurs exercise individual agency to overcome structural constraints by developing strategies that prioritize their own business aspirations without fully sacrificing their family ties.     

Overcoming the mobility bias in transnational entrepreneurship

The current article contributes to the debates on immobility in migration studies. More specifically, it aims to show and challenge mobility bias in transnational entrepreneurship; the relevant scholarship appears to overconcentrate on immigrants as major driving forces of cross-border business relations while ignoring the contributions of nonmigrant populations. Based on the qualitative data collected from Central Asian migrant entrepreneurs in Russia, this research dispels the myth about the inertness of nonmigrants by demonstrating their utmost importance in establishing and sustaining transnational enterprises. Therefore, transnational entrepreneurship should be regarded as the result of joint efforts of both mobile and sedentary actors. The presented evidence suggests that mobility and immobility are integrally intertwined and mutually constitutive. This study calls for a more balanced and nuanced vision of how transnationalism occurs.     

Traditional Chinese herbal medicine as cultural power along the Southeast Asian belt and road corridor

In 2013, President Xi Jinping launched the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) as a global strategy to catapult China onto the global stage through port and infrastructure development, financial, technological, trade and cultural connectivity. The BRI embraces six corridors, one of which is the Southeast Asian corridor. Among the BRI portfolio, the Chinese government has identified traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) as an important health commodity for the global and Chinese Diaspora market. It is also promoted as part of the cultural and intangible Chinese heritage. This paper explores TCM as an important cultural power - a variant of soft power - that connects Mainland Chinese and global Chinese communities and enables the formation of regional social and economic networks that assist in the development of trade, leading to the formation of collaborative cultural basins between TCM institutions in China and Southeast Asian nations.     

More or less guanxi: Trust is 60% network context, 10% individual difference

The strong ties known in China as guanxi can be distinguished by a high level of trust relatively independent of the surrounding social structure. Using network data from a stratified probability sample of 700 entrepreneurs citing 4664 contacts, we study guanxi relative to other relations to learn how much individual differences such as well-being, business differences, political participation and demographic factors matter for the guanxi distinction. Two findings stand out: First, the connection between trust and social network is robust to most differences between individuals, especially business and political differences. Trust variance is 60% network context, and 10% individual differences. Trust increases within a relationship as network closure increases around the relationship, but some relationships mature into guanxi ties within which trust is high and relatively independent of the surrounding social structure. Second, when individual differences matter, they concern social isolation. Guanxi ties are more distinct in the networks around entrepreneurs with small, marginal families, and around those with small, closed networks. Both categories of entrepreneurs are likely to experience difficulties with respect to resource access and doing business with people beyond their network, which may explain why longstanding guanxi ties linked to important events are particularly distinct for these entrepreneurs.     

Regrounding the ‘Ungrounded Empires’:localization as the geographical catalyst for transnationalism

The emerging literature on transnationalism has reshaped the study of immigration in the USA from ‘melting pot’ and later ‘salad bowl’, to ‘switching board’, which emphasizes the ability of migrants to forge and maintain ties to their home countries. Often under the heading of ‘transnationalism from below’, these studies highlight an alternative form of globalization, in which migrants act as active agents to initiate and structure global interactions. The role of geography, and in particular, localization in transnational spaces, is central to the transnationalism debate, but is yet to be well articulated. While it has been commonly claimed that transnationalism represents deterritorialized practices and organizations, we argue that it is in fact rooted in the territorial division of labour and local community networks in immigrant sending and receiving countries. We examine closely two business sectors engaged in by the Chinese immigrants in Los Angeles: high‐tech firms and accounting firms. Each illustrates, respectively, the close ties of Chinese transnational activities with the economic base of the Los Angeles region, and the contribution of local‐based, low‐wage, small ethnic businesses to the transnational practices. We conclude that deeper localization is the geographical catalyst for transnational networks and practices.     

The Changing Experience of Australian Female Entrepreneurs

The study of female entrepreneurship is a dynamic field, with more women than men engaging in self‐employment in Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States. Prior research in this field has identified a series of factors which characterize entrepreneurs. This paper examines the extent to which the experiences of Australian women entrepreneurs are reflected in the prior research. In particular, emphasis is placed on whether the personal characteristics, educational levels, motivations for starting business and resource acquisition behaviour of contemporary Australian women entrepreneurs are reflected in the prior research. While many of the key findings of prior research were found to describe accurately the experience of Australian women entrepreneurs, three new factors have been identified. First, Australian women entrepreneurs have increasingly come from business education backgrounds compared to the predominantly liberal arts backgrounds reported elsewhere. Second, the reasons for establishing small business differ insofar as they represent a greater proportion of general business needs as well as personal internal needs. Third, Australian women entrepreneurs are moving away from traditional ’female industries‘ into sectors identified as ’male industries‘ such as manufacturing. Overall, Australian women entrepreneurs demonstrate similarities in their identifying characteristics; however, significant shifts are occurring in their behaviours.     

Transnational issue networks in real and virtual space: the case of women,peace and security

To what extent do online issue networks serve as a proxy for their real‐space counterparts in structure and substance? This question is significant because a number of scholars have begun to study transnational advocacy networks through their representations online. We explored whether this assumption is valid by comparing the network composition and agenda composition of the advocacy network around ‘women, peace and security’, as operationalized through a web‐based survey of actual activists, and the network's online representations of itself, as measured through advocacy websites. Two specific concerns drove the study. First, how closely does the structure of issue networks, as represented on the World Wide Web, correspond with actual advocates' understanding of the players within a specific issue domain? Second, to what extent does the online issue agenda correlate with the most prominent issues described by real‐space advocates within a transnational network? Our findings yielded a high correlation between the online issue agenda and activists’ interpretations of the agenda. However, we found that while hyperlink analysis is an effective tool for identifying the ‘hubs’ or ‘gatekeepers’ within a specific issue network, the nature of the World Wide Web makes it is a blunt tool with which to capture the broader network. This suggests that while the web poses important opportunities as a data source, scholars of transnational networks must pay closer attention to the methodological assumptions implicit in their reliance on this and other new media.     

Migrants’ Descendants and New Mobilities between China and Spain

The economic rise of China and the financial crises in Spain have transformed transnational practices between the two countries and have boosted new strategies of mobility among Spanish of Chinese descent. This article examines the relationship that migrants’ descendants establish with their parents’ country of origin from their childhood, and analyses emerging new mobilities towards China undertaken by migrants’ descendants who have attained high degrees of formal education and are looking for a better professional future. The article argues that migrants’ descendants are reshaping the transnational space between the two countries and re-evaluating their transnational training in order to apply their Spanish and Chinese socio-cultural skills in their professional careers. The research reveals how migrants’ descendants undertake a migration journey to secure upward social mobility, just as their parents did when migrating to Europe. Hence, social and geographical mobility intersect in opposite directions over time and across generations.     

Collegial oligarchy and networks of normative alignments in transnational institution building

This paper presents a combined relational and cultural approach to transnational institution building by focusing on a network analysis of a small collegial oligarchy and normative alignments among its peers. To contribute to a theory of institutionalization, we propose hypotheses about whom professionals as institutional entrepreneurs are likely to select as members of their collegial oligarchy, about the role of social networks among them in identifying these leaders, and about the costs of alignments on these leaders’ normative choices. We test these hypotheses using mainly Exponential Random Graph Models (ERGMs) applied to a dataset including network information and normative choices collected at the so-called Venice Forum – a field-configuring event that was central in creating and mobilizing a network of European patent judges for the construction of a new transnational institution, the European Unified Patent Court. We track normative alignments on the collegial hierarchy in this network of judges and their divergent interpretations of the contemporary European patent. Highlighting this under-examined articulation of relational infrastructures and cultural framing in transnational institutionalization shows how Northern European forms of capitalism tend to dominate in this institutionalization process at the expense of the Southern European forms. It also helps reflect on the usefulness of analyses of small networks of powerful players in organizational societies, where power and influence are highly concentrated.     

Bridges to learning: international student mobilities,education agencies and inter‐personal networks

International education is a fundamentally transnational project. It relies on the movement of individuals or knowledge across national borders, disturbs the centrality of the nation‐state in educational reproduction, and is facilitated by economic and social networks that act as bridges between countries of origin and education. In this article, I address this latter point through reference to research conducted with South Korean international students in Auckland, New Zealand. In particular, I discuss the emergence of transnational social and economic activities that are facilitating the movement of international students from South Korea to Auckland — activities that might usefully be understood as forming ‘bridges to learning’. These include the activities of education agencies, immigrant entrepreneurs and the interpersonal relationships with which many students engage in the negotiation of their transnational lives. In a broader sense I illustrate how the emerging mobilities of international students cannot be viewed as independent of other phenomena but must be seen as embedded within transnational processes that take place at different geographic and social scales.     

The Significance of Networks in the Initiation of Small Businesses in Taiwan

This paper investigates theoretically a factor that impacts the institutional and structural environment of initiating small investments in Taiwan, namely personal relationship networks. A potential investor needs market opportunities in order to earn profit, business organization to exploit the opportunity, and capital to initiate the business. In Taiwan's network economy, the solidarity provided by family networks makes small initial business organizations possible. Subcontracting systems, both horizontal and vertical, make the entry-level investment low, and the decentralized production/marketing processes provide numerous market opportunities for small investments. Taiwanese entrepreneurs opt to start their business ventures primarily through the use of network financing, since bank loans fall under the dominion of government policies.     

Merchants and missionaries: Chinese evangelical networks and the transnational resacralization of European urban spaces

This article sheds new light on the diverse modes in which migration and religion intersect in shaping everyday transnational practices by exploring the articulations of religion and business migration in an emerging Chinese-led transnational mission field. Drawing on multisited ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Wenzhou, Rome and Paris, I show how a large group of transnational Chinese merchants has adopted a vigorous homegrown evangelical Christianity as the spiritual and social anchor of their territorial mercantile culture in diaspora. These merchants have actively engaged in producing religious activities and events that link China to Europe and in resacralizing secular real estate and attaching evangelistic meanings to Europe's historic urban spaces. For rural-originated migrants who embrace a global hierarchy of places, the evangelical discursive distinction between the mundane and the transcendent spheres finds expression in their perceived opposition between the peripheral local and the modern global centre in the global market economy.     

The global corporate elite after the financial crisis: evidence from the transnational network of interlocking directorates

What impact did the recent financial crisis have on the corporate elite's international network? Has corporate governance taken on an essentially national structure or have transnational networks remained robust? We investigate this issue by comparing the networks of interlocking directorates among the 176 largest corporations in the world economy in 1976, 1996, 2006 and 2013. We find that corporate elites have not retrenched into their national business communities: the transnational network increased in relative importance and remained largely intact during the crisis lasting from 2006 to 2013. However, this network does not depend – as it used to do – on a small number of big linkers but on a growing number of single linkers. The network has become less hierarchical. As a group, the corporate elite has become more transnational in character. We see this as indicative of a recomposition of the corporate elite from a national to a transnational orientation.     

Model Hong Kong malls and their development in mainland China: consumer iconicity and the trans/national capitalist class

Relational geographies of capital and consumption between Hong Kong and mainland China have been forming through tourism engagement in Hong Kong and the development of model Hong Kong malls in China. This analysis of urban restructuring for the consumer economy identifies how landmark Hong Kong malls are reproduced in major cities of China by networks of Hong Kong property firms and mainland elites. Adapting Leslie Sklair's formulation of architectural iconicity in the culture‐ideology of consumerism, this economic relationship, which restructures urban space, constructs iconic built forms and develops Chinese consumerism, marks hegemonic opportunities of a national capitalist class, suggesting how Chinese state capitalism and its Hong Kong networks limit and incrementally engage transnational capital while instantiating Hong Kong‐style consumer iconicity. New malls in mixed‐use developments in China often occupy sites of historical markets and thus affirm Sklair's prediction that iconic architecture increasingly proclaims consumer space while claiming historic forms of public space.