The family influences of EO development in immigrant family businesses

This paper explores how family influences the entrepreneurial orientation (EO) process in immigrant family business. To fulfill the purpose, we employ inductive multiple case studies with in-depth interviews. We rely on seven cases of immigrant entrepreneurs of Chinese, Icelandic, Turkish, Cameroonian, Mexican and Lebanese who established firms in Sweden. Our results suggest that EO development trajectories vary in regard to first and second immigrant entrepreneurs, low and high-tech sectors and host and home countries. Thus, family dynamics facilitates the development of entrepreneurial orientation over time through transforming, translating and transferring across generations and contexts. Our study indicates that, through family dynamics, EO is developed as a (1) transferring process of the founders’ proactiveness between the family in the home and host country;(2) translating process of risk-taking between the family companies in the home country to immigrant family company in the host country and (3) transforming process of innovativeness between the home and the host country