Internationale Migranten werden häufiger selbständig und gründen Unternehmen als Menschen ohne interkulturelle Erfahrung. Aktuelle Theorien legen nahe, dass ihre unternehmerische Aktivität durch spezielle Ressourcen und institutionelle Arrangements ausgelöst wird, die es attraktiver machen unternehmerische Chancen zu nützen, als Beschäftigung am Arbeitsmarkt zu suchen. Im Gegensatz dazu beschreibt diese Dissertation eine neue Perspektive auf das Phänomen. Sie entwickelt die Hypothese, dass interkulturelle Erfahrungen die Fähigkeit erhöhen, unternehmerische Chancen zu erkennen, indem sie Zugang zu neuem Wissen schaffen und kreatives Denken unterstützen. Die Ergebnisse einer Querschnittstudie (n=444) und eines longitudinalen natürlichen Experimentes (n=243) bestätigen die genannte und weitere Hypothesen und zeigen, dass interkulturelle Erfahrung, kulturelle Distanz, Wissen über neue Produkte und Dienstleistungen und divergentes Denken die Fähigkeit beeinflussen, unternehmerische Chancen wahrzunehmen. Die Ergebnisse bieten Implikationen für Forschung, Politik und Praxis in den Bereichen Entrepreneurship, Bildung und Migration. (author's abstract)

The purpose of this thesis is to analyze Swedish entrepreneurs and how they recognize opportunities in transition economies. In order to reach the intention of thesis, a case study of three Swedish firms have been conducted with interviews. Theoretical framework consists of the entrepreneurship theory, opportunity recognition process and innovations which all are relevant to the study and research questions. The empirical findings include the case firms view on entrepreneurial characteristics, opportunities and innovations. The conclusions of the thesis are that opportunities are recognized by individuals with specific characteristics. Suppliers, customers and agents can influence opportunity recognition process and direction.

Besides the three traditional ICs(Intellectual Capital) including Human Capital, Structural Capital and Customer Capital, Social Capital(SC) has been recognized as a forth critical IC of an organization in the network economy. In the 21st century, various kinds of collaborations among organizations such as strategic alliance or virtual organization play a major role in the global competition marketplace; no one can do their business alone. Therefore, only an inter-organizational collaborative team with strong relationships and network ties among the members can more efficiently and effectively discover, evaluate and exploit the emerging entrepreneurial opportunities. The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of a firm¡¦s social capital on its capabilities to discover, evaluate and exploit the entrepreneurial opportunities. Three dimensions of a firm¡¦s social capital are canalized. (Nahapiet & Ghoshal, 1998) (1)structural dimension: includes network ties and network configurations (2)cognitive dimension: includes shared codes, languages and narratives (3)relational dimension: includes trust, norm, obligations, and identifications. Moreover, since a firm¡¦s absorptive capability of new knowledge and its past related knowledge base also influence the effectiveness of its exploitation of entrepreneurial opportunity, Absorptive Capability Theory (Cohen & Levinthal, 1990) and current knowledge base of a firm are also used as two variables in the research model to increase the integrity of the model. An empirical survey methodology is applied to test the research model and hypotheses proposed in this study. Five out of nine hypotheses are validated in our research model with Path Analysis. The research result reveals that the structural dimension of a firm¡¦s social capital has the most impact on its abilities of entrepreneurial opportunities; on the other hand, a firm¡¦s absorptive capability of knowledge is affected by the structural and relational dimensions of social capital. Furthermore, the result validates that both absorptive capability and the abilities of entrepreneurial opportunities of a firm exhibit significant path dependency. This result will be useful to both the academic and business particularly in its advocacy of the cultivation of the structural dimension of a firm¡¦s social capital.

Internationally mobile individuals such as migrants and expatriates exhibit a higher level of entrepreneurial activity than people without cross-cultural experience. Current research suggests that this pattern is rooted in specific resources and institutional arrangements that increase the attractiveness of exploiting entrepreneurial opportunities. In this study, we provide an additional explanation: We argue that cross-cultural experience increases the ability to recognize entrepreneurial opportunities. This argument is supported by two complementary studies - a longitudinal quasi-experiment and a priming experiment. We find convergent evidence that cross-cultural experience increases a person's capabilities to recognize particularly profitable types of opportunities by facilitating the application of cross-cultural knowledge for the discovery of arbitrage opportunities and creative recombination. (authors' abstract)

Zahlreiche Arbeiten im Bereich der Entrepreneurship-Forschung versuchen aus unterschiedlichen disziplinären Perspektiven zu erklären, warum manche Menschen Opportunities wahrnehmen und unternehmerisch tätig werden und andere nicht. Dies wird in der Literatur als "Opportunity Recognition" (OR) bezeichnet und weitgehend als Kernelement im entrepreneurialen Prozess beschrieben. Aufgrund dieser Bedeutung von Opportunity Recognition entwickelten sich zahlreiche Erklärungsansätze, die als ökonomische, psychologische oder sozio-kognitive Perspektiven in die Entrepreneurship-Forschung eingeführt wurden. Die vorherrschende Trennung in disziplinenspezifische Erklärungsansätze hat zwar ihre Berechtigung, liefert jedoch bisher unbefriedigend integrative Erkenntnisse. In Abgrenzung zu anderen Arbeiten betrachtet dieser Beitrag Opportunity Recognition auf Basis subjektiver Theorien von Entrepreneuren. Der integrative Ansatz der subjektiven Theorien bietet das Potential disziplinenübergreifend Hinweise auf mögliche Einflussfaktoren der OR in subjektiven Theoriebeständen zu untersuchen. Ziel der Arbeit ist zu erforschen, welche inhaltlichen und strukturellen Charakteristika subjektive Theorien von Entrepreneuren aufweisen und inwiefern sich Logiken und/oder Strategien für die Identifikation einer Opportunity in ihnen widerspiegeln. Dazu wurde eine empirische Rekonstruktion der Strukturlogik subjektiver Theorien von Entrepreneuren auf Basis von narrativen Interviews und objektiv-hermeneutischen Interpretationsverfahren durchgeführt. Die Ergebnisse dieser Arbeit liefern vielfältige Erkenntnisse hinsichtlich der Strukturen und Inhalte von subjektiven Theorien von Entrepreneuren sowie ihrer Entwicklung. Sie verweisen auf die zentrale Bedeutung sozialer Interaktionskontexte des Entrepreneurs, sowohl für die Ausprägung subjektiver Theoriebestände im Allgemeinen als auch für die Schärfung von Opportunities und ihrer Verwertung im Speziellen. Zudem wird deutlich, dass sich subjektive Theoriebestände hinsichtlich ihres Abstraktions- und Komplexitätsgrades sowie ihrer zeitlichen Stabilität maßgeblich unterscheiden. Die Erkenntnisse der vorliegenden Arbeit lassen Zweifel an der Sinnhaftigkeit einer auf ein analytisches Konstrukt "Opportunity" fokussierten Forschung aufkommen. Als Alternative wird das umfassendere Konzept der subjektiven Unternehmertheorie vorgeschlagen, das die Relevanz mentaler Modelle von Unternehmern und das ihnen inhärente Integrationspotential für unterschiedliche Einflussfaktoren und Erklärungsansätze für OR verdeutlicht. (Autorenref.)

Social entrepreneurship (SE) has become a rapidly advancing domain of enquiry and holds a place in policy makers consideration around the globe. Opportunities have been regarded as critical in SE, but are often portrayed in abstract and unspecified ways. Research on this topic remains relatively scarce, theory building is not yet established and integrated, and the dearth of empirical studies further constrains theoretical development in SE. Researchers have thus called for more exploration and a comprehensive theoretical understanding of SE opportunities. The purpose of this study is to explore SE opportunities through empirical investigation and theoretical development. As an exploratory study, this study addresses two broad research questions: (1) What are SE opportunities? And (2) How do they emerge? To answer these questions, I draw on the broader entrepreneurship literature which provides two main alternative explanations: opportunity discovery (nexus theory) and opportunity creation (effectuation theory). While the discovery/creation debate is still ongoing, recent theoretical advancement has shown a possible path of forwarding entrepreneurial opportunity research, suggesting that research should incorporate structure and agency simultaneously in studying opportunities. Following this path, this study contributes to SE opportunity research by providing a comprehensive understanding of SE opportunities, it also helps address the discovery/creation debate in the context of SE. To make this contribution, this study first adopts critical realism as a research philosophy as well as methodology. Critical realism incorporates the effects of both structure and agency through its ontological assumptions of three domains of reality, while providing an explanatory framework to assess competing theories. Second, this study selects China as a context for empirical study. As a relation-oriented society, China provides a useful context for studying the causal relations between the social structure (guanxi) and SE opportunity. China s institutional context and fast growing social enterprise sector also provides a promising setting for exploratory research on SE opportunities. Based on critical realism, I used a three-step qualitative multi-case study to develop an explanatory framework in which guanxi and social capital theory provide theoretical explanations of the social structure and its causal powers, which lead to SE opportunity emergence in China. Data were collected from 45 interviews with Chinese social entrepreneurs, their employees and other key stakeholders in 36 organisations in Beijing, Hunan Province and Shanghai. My research findings show that SE opportunities develop in all of the three domains defined by critical realism. In the domain of empirical a world of human experience of social events a SE opportunity can be described as discovered, created, or as both discovered and created. In the domain of actual the social events under study a SE opportunity consists of three internal and necessary constituents: unjust social equilibrium (USE), social entrepreneurs beliefs (SEB), and social feasibility (SF). In the domain of real deeper structures, causal powers and mechanism that produce the social event the emergence of SE opportunities can be seen as the result of a resource acquisition and mobilisation mechanism whereby USE, SEB and SF are identified or formed through social entrepreneurs social capital embedded in guanxi. Building on these findings, this study concludes with a theoretical framework that offers a comprehensive explanation of SE opportunity emergence in China. This study is the first attempt to apply critical realism to the study of opportunities in the context of SE in China. It contributes to the SE and general entrepreneurship literature by developing a theoretical framework of SE opportunity emergence that provides an alternative explanation for the existence of discovery and creation opportunities, and by extending our theoretical understandings of some key concepts of SE. This research further provides an example of the use of qualitative methods to apply critical realism in SE and general entrepreneurship research, which contributes to the development of relatively rigorous research design and research methods in studying complex social events.

This study focuses on how entrepreneurs learn about international business opportunities and explores the factors that affect the way they do it. The main conclusion of the literature review was that current international entrepreneurship research is still under development and the topic of international entrepreneurial learning about business opportunities yet to receive widespread attention. In addition, entrepreneurs utilise different ways to learn about the opportunities. However, there is a lack of coherence among scholars on what learning strategies are exactly, how many of them exist, and how they should be defined and categorised (Kakkonen, 2010).The research strategy of this study is based on the mixed methods approach. The design is a two-phase, sequential mixed methods study, utilising a qualitative, followed by a quantitative phase (Creswell et al., 2003). The qualitative phase was split into two parts: QUAL1 and QUAL2. Each qualitative phase includes the analysis of interviews and focus group discussions (Tashakkori and Teddlie, 1998). In the quantitative phase, a web-based questionnaire was the chosen data collection tool (Cobanoglu et al., 2001; Sills and Song, 2002). The study was conducted on a sample of 178 high-tech entrepreneurs in Israel. The results show that international entrepreneurs learn strategically about business opportunities. They utilise different ways, means, and mechanisms to assist in the identification process of entrepreneurial opportunities. These processes can be considered as learning processes, and the way they are enacted can be termed as 'learning strategies'. Based on the findings of the qualitative phases (QUAL1, QUAL2) and prior studies, six learning strategies were identified as relevant to the process of opportunity identification. Furthermore, the quantitative phase showed that business ownership experience and entrepreneurial self-efficacy have a significant influence on prior knowledge on international arena. In addition, prior knowledge was found as the most significant factor, affecting the ways entrepreneurs learn about business opportunities, while the cognitive style was found to moderate the strength of the relationships between prior knowledge and the learning strategies. Social networking ties also had an impact on the ways entrepreneurs learn, however this influence is diverse, and its statistical significance depends on the specific learning strategy. The importance and contribution of the proposed study can be defined as follows: Firstly, the study can help to reveal the underlying logic of opportunity identification as a learning process. Secondly, combining different frameworks into a new conceptual model as has been done in this study, may establish a new outlook, and contribute to the progress of research into entrepreneurship. Thirdly, International entrepreneurs can also benefit from these elements by acknowledging that they have a battery of learning strategies, which are relevant to the opportunity identification process, and most importantly, they can be taught how to learn about an idea throughout the process of opportunity identification.

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