Internationalization of immigrant-owned SMEs: The role of language

Sui Sui, Horatio Morgan () and Matthias Baum

Journal of World Business, 2015, vol. 50, issue 4, 804-814

Abstract: Immigrant entrepreneurs have become increasingly important to economic development, and there is substantial debate regarding their enhanced potential to expand their activities across national borders. However, research regarding how immigrant-owned small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) engage in internationalization and how entrepreneurs’ native languages might influence such processes remains in its infancy. Drawing on a sample of 3077 Canadian SMEs, we evaluated the impact of immigrant ownership and the moderating role of native language on companies’ decisions to export to global markets and to the English-speaking regional market. Immigrant ownership generally fostered a global orientation, particularly for French and Allophone owners.

Keywords: Immigrants; Internationalization; International trade; Liability of outsidership; Language; Small and medium-sized enterprises (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (22)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S109095161500022X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:worbus:v:50:y:2015:i:4:p:804-814

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/620401/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... 620401/bibliographic

DOI: 10.1016/j.jwb.2015.04.002

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of World Business is currently edited by David Collings and Jonathan Doh

More articles in Journal of World Business from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().