Entrepreneurial opportunities are frequently noted and addressed in the literature of immigrant entrepreneurship; however, little is known about how these entrepreneurial opportunities come into existence and how immigrant entrepreneurs create such opportunities. The purpose of this thesis is to examine why and how immigrant entrepreneurs create entrepreneurial opportunities through embedding processes in the home country and the host country. Sweden was chosen as the country of residence of immigrant entrepreneurs from Lebanon, Syria, Cameroon and Mexico. Four cases were selected in this study. Each case illustrates an opportunity creation process in a different industry, between a different home country and Sweden as the host country and by immigrant entrepreneurs with different backgrounds. By using the mixed embeddedness perspective as the theoretical lens in combination with the literature on entrepreneurial opportunity and immigrant entrepreneurship, this thesis develops a model of entrepreneurial opportunity creation as an integration process. The findings suggest that entrepreneurial opportunity creation can be considered as a process of local integration by immigrant entrepreneurs into the host country and a re-integration of these entrepreneurs into the home country. At the beginning of the opportunity creation process, immigrant entrepreneurs feel socially excluded in the host country. Throughout the opportunity creation process, immigrant entrepreneurs interact with different actors in the host country and gradually move from being socially excluded to socially included, which illustrates a local integration process. In this process, immigrant entrepreneurs become localized through different activities that embed them in the local context. The process of entrepreneurial idea and business concept development and the refinement of the business concept in this thesis illustrates an ongoing and non-linear process of: being locally integrated through creating trust in the local people, acculturating and creating a sense of belonging; and being re-integrated to the home country through maintaining and establishing new links to the home country. The study contributes to the mainstream entrepreneurship and immigrant entrepreneurship in several ways. First, it contributes to studies on immigrant entrepreneurship by investigating why immigrants embark on a journey to be entrepreneurs and how immigrant entrepreneurs create entrepreneurial opportunities through embedding processes in the home and the host country. The study demonstrates how an entrepreneurial opportunity is created as a social integration process. Second, the study contributes to literature on entrepreneurship and immigrant entrepreneurship by incorporating the entrepreneurial opportunity creation process with acculturation strategies. It illustrates how the entrepreneurial opportunity creation process intertwines with the four strategies of acculturation. Third, the study contributes to the mixed embeddedness perspective by adopting the process approach and proposing mixed embedding as a new concept which centers on the interplay between the home and the host country’s influences on immigrants’ business activities; by extending mixed embeddedness from the national level of the home country or the host country to the transnational level between the home country and the host country; and by proposing an alternative way to view an entrepreneurial opportunity as a creation process instead of being discovered. Fourth, the study contributes to the immigrant entrepreneurship literature in Sweden by furthering the understanding of entrepreneurial opportunity creation by immigrant entrepreneurs in Sweden. Furthermore, the study suggests some implications for practice. The study proposes some embedding mechanisms which can be implemented in business support programs for immigrant entrepreneurs and in integration programs for immigrants in general. The design of the business support programs can aim to help immigrant entrepreneurs to: create credibility through contacts and experiences that they establish and gain in the local community; create familiarity to the local community through associating business concepts with well-known values; engage in the local life to understand customers’ mindsets, master the local language to understand local customers’ needs; and establish new/strengthen connections to the home country. The design of integration programs can aim to undertake activities that help immigrants increase the interaction between the local people and themselves. This type of interaction could be increased by organizing meetings and activities in which immigrants are introduced to different local sports clubs and hobby clubs. An approach in which the host country’s language is practiced and mastered anywhere and anytime should be adopted in the integration programs.

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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 paper investigated trends in social entrepreneurship within non-profit organisations (NPOs). It was inspired by a survey conducted by Trialogue, a non-profit research organisation that surveys corporate social investment in South Africa. The survey showed a significant number of Non-profit organisations (69%) are moving toward developing social enterprise due to issues of sustainability. The research sought to ascertain what are the causes for the trend. The method of sampling used was non-probability, purposeful sampling to select 12 organisations from the available population. An exploratory qualitative study was conducted via face-to-face interviews with 12 organisations and 14 respondents. The transcripts of each were manually reviewed line-by-line for common themes to compare and generate results. The study was undertaken to better understand what motivated NPOs to social entrepreneurship and how they identified and exploited opportunities; distributed revenues and what form of relationship was created with the parent organization. The study reviewed theoretical models and selected a best-fit model of the Opportunity Creation Process which had to be modified to suit the trends in thought that arose from the study. The findings showed that funding challenges of the parent NPO and limited access to funds were key features likely to illustrate when an NPO will move into social entrepreneurship. The research concludes with evidence demonstrating that NPOs are not always willing participants in the social enterprise game, but are forced to discover opportunities to prove to funders that they are seeking means to be sustainable, with varying degrees of success. The form of social enterprise they select is often determined by the centrality of the NPOs mission to that of the social enterprise. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

Abstract The rapid development of digital technology and software in recent years has created great variety of totally new business opportunities. Software startups are commonly considered to be the fastest in exploiting the new opportunities and the most innovative in creating new products and services. At the same time, software startups are often small, immature enterprises with limited resources and inexperienced teams. The initial team plays a key role in the early stages of a software startup. This research focuses on the initial team from the perspective of human capital – the knowledge, experiences, skills, and other cognitive abilities. It studies the initial team empirically, utilizing the multi-case study and triangulation methods applying the human capital, resource-based view, capability, and the opportunity discovery and creation theories. The empirical data were gathered from thirteen software startups in Italy, Norway and Finland, and from a student experiment. From the analysis of this data, a generic structure of a software startup’s initial team was identified, consisting of three different roles, with each having a specific human capital profile. This team structure sought a balance between the team’s human capital and problems and challenges to be solved. The level of the initial human capital of the team and the means to strengthen it varied, and affected the progress of the work in the studied startups. Though the components of the team’s human capital were not rare and inimitable in terms of the resource-based view, building a balanced startup team created a unique and task-specific setup, which is a key capability of a software startup. The balanced startup team structure is proposed to be the generic human capital model of a software startup’s initial team. / Tiivistelmä Digitaalitekniikan ja ohjelmistojen nopea kehitys viime vuosina on synnyttänyt suuren joukon kokonaan uusia liiketoimintamahdollisuuksia. Ohjelmistostartup-yrityksiä pidetään yleisesti nopeimpina hyödyntämään uusia mahdollisuuksia ja erityisen innovatiivisina luomaan uusia tuotteita ja palveluita. Kuitenkin samalla, ohjelmistostartup-yritykset ovat usein pieniä, kehityksensä alussa olevia yrityksiä, joilla on pienet resurssit ja kokematon henkilökunta. Varhaisen vaiheen ohjelmistostartup-yrityksissä alkutiimin merkitys on keskeinen. Tässä tutkimuksessa tarkastellaan alkutiimiä inhimillisen pääoman, osaamisen, kokemuksen ja taitojen, näkökulmasta. Tutkimuksessa tarkastellaan alkutiimiä kokeellisesti, käyttäen monitapaustutkimuksen ja triangulaation menetelmiä ja soveltaen inhimillisen pääoman, resurssipohjaisen näkemyksen, kyvykkyyden ja liiketoimintamahdollisuuksien hyödyntämisen teorioita. Kokeellinen tutkimusaineisto on kerätty kolmestatoista yrityksestä Italiasta, Norjasta ja Suomesta ja yhdestä opiskelijoilla tehdystä kokeellisesta tutkimuksesta. Tutkimuksessa löydettiin alkutiimin yleinen malli. Mallissa on kolme roolia, kullakin oma inhimillisen pääoman profiili. Mallissa on tiimin inhimillisen pääoman ja ratkaistavien ongelmien tasapaino. Tiimien inhimillisen pääoman määrä ja sen kehitystavat vaihtelivat, ja vaikuttivat tutkittavien yritysten edistymiseen. Vaikka alkutiimien inhimillisen pääoman komponentit eivät olleet ainutkertaisia resurssipohjaisen näkemyksen kannalta, tasapainossa olevan alkutiimin rakentaminen synnytti ainutkertaisen, tehtävänmukaisen tiimirakenteen, jota voidaan pitää yrityksen keskeisenä kyvykkyytenä. Havaittu tiimirakenne esitetään yrityksen alkutiimin inhimillisen pääoman yleiseksi malliksi.