Abstract
PurposeGiven the importance of immigration and immigrant entrepreneurs in advanced economies, the authors take an entrepreneurial ecosystem perspective to study the home-country benefits possessed by immigrant entrepreneurs and how home-country entrepreneurial ecosystem factors affect immigrant entrepreneurial motivations, activities and outcomes.Design/methodology/approachThis conceptual research paper follows McGaghie, Bordage and Shea's (2001) four-step new theory creation process, which suggests that new theories can be created through facts extraction from the extant literature.FindingsThe authors propose that although immigrant entrepreneurs are unable to take full benefit of the host-country entrepreneurial ecosystem due to blocked mobility, they do have capabilities to access and use their home-country entrepreneurial resources and opportunities. The authors further propose that home-country entrepreneurial capital can be systemically analyzed through the framework of the entrepreneurial ecosystem. The results imply that immigrant entrepreneurship as a social and economic phenomenon can be studied more holistically from both host- and home-country perspectives compared to the traditional research boundary of the host-country only.Research limitations/implicationsThe research focuses on the identification of home-country effects on immigrant entrepreneurship through the lens of the entrepreneurial ecosystem. Testable propositions provide directions for future empirical research on the field of immigrant entrepreneurship from a home-country perspective. The research concludes that a holistic immigrant entrepreneurship study should consider dual (host- and home-country) entrepreneurial ecosystems.Practical implicationsImmigrant entrepreneurs benefit from both host- and home-country entrepreneurial ecosystems. This paper suggests co-effects of dual entrepreneurial ecosystems lead to a high rate of entrepreneurship and business success within some immigrant groups. Policymakers can increase economic activities by developing and deploying programs to encourage immigrants to embed in host- and home-country entrepreneurial ecosystems.Originality/valueBased on the framework of the entrepreneurial ecosystem, this paper brings a novel perspective to examining home-country effects on immigrant entrepreneurship. It theoretically conceptualizes that immigrants have higher entrepreneurship rates than native-born populations because they have access to extra home-country entrepreneurial capital.
Highlights
The results, which lead to six testable propositions for future empirical studies, should help understand why immigrants have a higher propensity for entrepreneurship, and success rate, as far as many scholars are concerned (Kerr and Kerr, 2019)
Through content analysis on extant literature across entrepreneurial ecosystem components from a home-country perspective, the paper concludes that a spatial entrepreneurial ecosystem can be deployed in immigrant entrepreneurship research
Governments and organizations note that immigration and immigrant entrepreneurship is central to the future socioeconomic prosperity in many advanced countries and requires more theoretical and empirical research (Hart et al, 2011; IOM, 2018; Australia Immigrant Council, 2016)
Summary
The Organization entrepreneurship for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) reported in 2010 that immigrant entrepreneurs give a distinct contribution to globalization and international business activities because they have an understanding of their host and home countries (OECD, 2010). The contribution of immigrant entrepreneurship in global and regional economic development is acknowledged and reflected in the growing number of research papers published on this topic. Scholars have noticed that the number of research papers on immigrant entrepreneurship has increased dramatically since 2000 (Dabica et al, 2020). Some scholars argue that home-country socioeconomic, political-cultural and other environmental factors impact immigrant entrepreneurship as well (Aliaga-Isla and Rialp, 2013; Nkongolo-Bakenda and Chrysostome, 2020)
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