Exploring immigrant and transnational entrepreneurship in the Australia and China context

Abstract

In the context of increasing trade links between China and Australia the thesis concentrates attention on the business activities and cross-cultural experiences of entrepreneurs that move competently and confidently within and between these quite different economic environments. In current literature these individuals are categorized as transnational entrepreneurs representing a subset of immigrant entrepreneurs, which indicates their migration or international experiences. This thesis takes a broad view about transnational entrepreneurship and intends to look for the essence of it beyond the limitation of immigrant identity. Upon this interests, this research addresses a number of core problems: 1. Why and how did first generation Chinese immigrants engage in entrepreneurship in Australia? 2. How and with what success did first generation Chinese immigrant entrepreneurs achieve social embeddedness in Australia? 3. What are the main characteristics of transnational entrepreneurship, with special reference to the Chinese and Australian contexts? Forty of entrepreneurs were interviewed comprising 34 Chinese immigrant and 6 Australians transnational entrepreneurs focusing in depth on the life and business experiences in a transnational context spanning China and Australia. The 34 immigrant entrepreneurs were 1st generation Chinese to provide contemporary insights that differ to the post immigrant studies. On the other hand, the 6 Australian transnational entrepreneurs provided a contrasting sample of entrepreneurs doing business predominately in a single country being China in this case. Both samples were embedded in a context that stretched their capabilities to adapt to a rapidly changing environment together with the need to quickly adapt to different regulations and ways and means of doing business. A thematic analysis method extracted 6 themes from interviews with Chinese immigrant entrepreneurs and 4 themes from interviews with Australian transnational entrepreneurs. These findings focused on a number of major challenges is the adaptive capabilities, such as knowledge accumulation about new market, connectivity to personal and social networks, cognitive change and capability to capture market needs and create market values. Meanwhile, findings from both groups appear some commonalities and differences based on these individuals’ cross cultural and entrepreneurial experiences. What emerged from the analysis and comprises the new knowledge contribution are: first, exploring the entrepreneurial journey of the first generation immigrant entrepreneurs and unveiling their intrinsic and cultural motive and impact of entrepreneurial human capital. The exploration of these immigrant entrepreneurs’ life and business trajectory provides a compensate view to the existing theoretical perspectives in immigrant entrepreneurship study. In addition, it links immigrant entrepreneurship study to the central issues of entrepreneurship research by identifying that entrepreneurial human capital as the fundamental character of outstanding immigrant entrepreneurs. Second, this research identifies the essence of transnational entrepreneurship which has been neglected from previous study. The essence of transnational entrepreneurship is to obtain sufficient and applicable cross cultural knowledge, experiences, and resources, thus, develop a transnational synergy between two countries. Additionally, this contribution also suggests that transnational entrepreneurs could be any entrepreneur who has cross border experiences and business interests. This means that, entrepreneurs do not have to be immigrants to be transnational. Third, this research raises a point that the entrepreneurial human capital is critical for these individuals to achieve transnational synergy, which leads to a success for transnational entrepreneurship.