Transnational resources of entrepreneurs and employees foster firm's competiveness. Firm competitiveness, especially the knowledge intensive business, is linked to its talent base and embeddedness in international networks providing business opportunities. However, in peripheral regions it is challenging to capitalise on international talent. This single case study describes an enterprise in Northern Sweden, which is strategically employing transnational diaspora resources and foreign STEM-talent as transnational intrapreneurs developing the business. The study contributes to international opportunity development and transnational diaspora research and illustrates how the creation of a transnational work-scape may compensate locational disadvantages and enable access to new opportunities and ideas.
This paper conducts an inductive case study to build a theory on the role of family in both the host and home countries in immigrant entrepreneurs' attempts at creating entrepreneurial opportunities. We used the perspectives of the opportunity creation process and family social capital. We relied on data collected from four cases of immigrant entrepreneurs from Lebanon, Syria, Cameroon and Mexico who have established businesses in Sweden. The paper identified three sources of family social capital: family duties, family trust and family support as being relevant for creating opportunities. While family duties triggered the process of forming an entrepreneurial idea, this process was advanced by the existence of family trust. Family support was then the building block for launching an entrepreneurial idea. By identifying these three sources of family social capital, we show that families in the host and home countries contribute to immigrant entrepreneurs' opportunity creation.
This paper examines the impact of managers' attitudes to growth on the realised growth in a sample of 1,416 small firms in northern Sweden. The findings demonstrate a positive relationship between the managers' attitudes and the actual growth outcomes. Zero-growth firms turned out different from both positive- and negative- growth firms with regard to managers' attitude towards growth as a competitive necessity. The owners of zero-growth firms perceived their firms as a primary source of income and employment. Our findings, therefore, provide indications of how attitudes affect outcomes among SMES that aspire to grow.
Self-employment is often discussed in terms of 'push' and 'pull' factors. The aim of this article is to assess not only the prevalence of 'necessity' self-employed and 'latent' entrepreneurs in Sweden, but also the characteristics in terms of socio-demography, personality traits, intrinsic work motivation and preference for independence associated with each group. In addition, the article investigates whether 'necessity' self-employment and 'latent' entrepreneurship are related to four measures of well-being. This is done using a nationally representative survey of the self-employed (small-business owners, n = 2,483) and regularly employed (n = 2,642) in Sweden. The main findings indicate that 'necessity' self-employed have characteristics and preferences that differ from other (non-'necessity') self-employed. They display relatively low intrinsic work motivation and preference for independence as well as scores on personality traits typically associated with entrepreneurship. They also report lower levels of work autonomy, job-satisfaction, life satisfaction and family-life satisfaction than other self-employed. 'Latent' entrepreneurs resemble entrepreneurs in many ways but they nevertheless report lower levels of well-being than non-'necessity' self-employed.
In this paper, we analyse immigrant women’s entrepreneurship in the care sector in Sweden. Twenty in-depth interviews with care entrepreneurs in the Stockholm region are analysed regarding the motives and entrepreneurial processes, against the background of the gender and ‘racially’ divided labour market. We conclude that the interviewed women are motivated by complex reasons, like a wish to create better care and better conditions for their personnel. In an act of transformation they turn negative reactions into actions and become entrepreneurs in order to make space for better care, at the margin of a subordinated sector of the economy. We conclude that they cross gendered and racialised lines in their identification as entrepreneurs, even though they are not seen as entrepreneurs by others. We find no evidence for the women being motivated to become entrepreneurs in order to escape unemployment.