Title: Cross-border entrepreneurship in a global world: a critical reconceptualisation

Authors: Julie Emontspool; Per Servais

Addresses: Department of Marketing and Management, University of Southern Denmark, Campusvej 55, 5230 Odense, Denmark ' Department of Marketing and Management, University of Southern Denmark, Campusvej 55, 5230 Odense, Denmark

Abstract: This article shows that international entrepreneurship and immigrant entrepreneurship increasingly intersect in a global world. Both research streams address cross-border entrepreneurial activity in parallel to each other. International entrepreneurship focuses on outgoing entrepreneurial activity, while immigrant entrepreneurship mainly considers incoming entrepreneurial activity. The article critically discusses such a dichotomy, highlighting how differentiating immigrant entrepreneurs and international entrepreneurs perpetuates orientalist assumptions about cross-border business activity. Focusing on entrepreneurship as a behaviour, the article proposes an alternative perspective to cross-border entrepreneurship, discussing cross-border opportunity identification and exploitation between an entrepreneur's country of residence and a foreign country. This perspective provides a number of avenues for further research open for scholars in the field of entrepreneurship to investigate either alone or in collaboration with other disciplines.

Keywords: international entrepreneur; immigrant entrepreneur; ethnic entrepreneur; transnational entrepreneur; opportunity; behavioural approach.

DOI: 10.1504/EJIM.2017.083875

European Journal of International Management, 2017 Vol.11 No.3, pp.262 - 279

Received: 12 Nov 2015
Accepted: 25 Aug 2016

Published online: 25 Apr 2017 *

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