Title: Trust as a coopetititive strategy in a global co-ethnic market: towards an empirically supported theory

Authors: Shahamak Rezaei

Addresses: Department of Social Society and Globalisation, Roskilde University, Building 25.3, P.O. Box 260, DK-4000 Roskilde, Denmark

Abstract: This article aims to push existing theory on immigrant business in a new direction, challenging the present mono ethnic, community delimited and static-structuralist approach with a focus on the processes of migrant business owners who simultaneously compete and cooperate with competitors, be it co-ethnic or cross-ethnic; in what are characterised as |coopetitive| environments. This coopetitive environment has led to interaction, learning and innovation within the context of multicultural communities and business activities, combined with an understanding of the ways such units are embedded in contemporary processes of globalisation rather than living locally isolated |lives of their own|. Trust, identification-based trust, bounded solidarity and enforceable trust seem to be some of the empirically supported catalysts that on one hand act as an initiating factor and on the other hand, as a prohibitive factor; respectively enabling or hindering entrepreneurial migrants to achieve success in their ventures. In order to support this theoretical perspective, the article presents some empirical evidence from Denmark on immigrant businesses, combining longitudinal registry data with survey data.

Keywords: globalisation; ethnic business; trust; bounded solidarity; coopetitive environments; Denmark; coopetition; immigrant business; migrant business owners; multicultural communities; entrepreneurial migrants; entrepreneurship; longitudinal registry data; survey data.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBG.2011.042059

International Journal of Business and Globalisation, 2011 Vol.7 No.3, pp.265 - 302

Published online: 27 Sep 2014 *

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