Immigrants and natives’ export benefitting from business collaborations: a global study

Abstract

The authors hypothesised that export develops in the network of business collaborations that are embedded in migration status. In that, collaborative networking positively affects export performance and immigrant entrepreneurs enjoy higher collaborative networking than native entrepreneurs due to their advantage of being embedded in the home and the host country. Moreover, the advantage of being an immigrant promotes the benefits of collaborative networking for export compared to those of native entrepreneurs. A total of 47,200 entrepreneurs starting, running and owning firms in 71 countries were surveyed by Global Entrepreneurship Monitor and analysed through the hierarchical linear modelling technique. Collaborative networking facilitated export and migration status influenced entrepreneur networking, in that, immigrant entrepreneurs had a higher level of collaborative networking than native entrepreneurs. Consequently, immigrant entrepreneurs seemed to have benefited from their network collaborations more than their native counterparts did. This study sheds light on how immigrant entrepreneur network collaborations can be effective for their exporting.