The cultural consequences of opportunity recognition and exploitation - The case of transnational entrepreneurs vs. indigenous entrepreneurs

The influence of culture on entrepreneurship has been of continued, scholarly interest for over three decades (George & Zahra, 2002)" Previous research indicated that some cultures are more conducive for entrepreneurship than others (Tan, 2002; Mueller & Thomas, 2000), however, one line of research that has not dealt with these processes, contrary to the cross-cultural perspective, is that on acculturation, specifically in the context of entrepreneurs with transnational background. Scholarly community has called upon theoretical rationales drawn from acculturation which offers a promising approach to grounding future investigation on entrepreneurial studies (George & Zahra, 2002). This paper aims to study the influence of acculturation experience on transnational entrepreneurs within an emerging economy setting, through a thorough review of literature on the subject, entrepreneurs are often characterized by their ability to recognize opportunities (Bygrave & Hofer, 1991), and the most basic entrepreneurial actions involve the pursuit of opportunity (Stevenson & Jarillo, 1990). However,. what if the agents "entrepreneurs" have previously been exposed to a secondary culture that is different from his/her own culture of origin (Hong, et al, 2000)? The extent to which, literature have failed to address this important aspect of cultural dimension of entrepreneurial activities, shed light upon the purpose of this paper, which is to propose a somewhat different approach to understand the opportunity recognition process rooted with acculturation theory. We propose that opportunity recognition is a special case of the creative process, which can be demonstrated through culture consequences; entrepreneurs who have experienced an acculturation process (namely: creative thinking, problem solving, logical reasoning, bilingualism, and social capital) developed a pattern of recognition featured with superior entrepreneurial alertness and bisociative thinking in recognizing and exploiting new venture opportunities, than those who did not have the acculturation experience: Indigenous Entrepreneurs. By employing a combined conceptual framework of resource-based view, social capital network, and acculturation theory, we aim to investigate whether transnational entrepreneurs have gained comparative advantages over indigenous entrepreneurs at the firm level, particularly in explaining "why" instead of "how" of this process, or indeed to attempt to contribute to the most prominent question within opportunity recognition research ' : Why some people recognize opportunities and some don't (Baron, 2006; Shane & Venkataraman, 2000; Gaglio & Taub, 1992; Long & McMullan, 1984).