Immigrants as entrepreneurs in emerging economies: Institutional, self-efficacy, and social networking effects on enterprise performance

Abstract

While extensive research exists on immigrants as workers and migrant laborers, studies on immigrants as entrepreneurs in emerging economies are only beginning to emerge. This article addresses the limited knowledge on how immigrant entrepreneurs' agency, particularly their motivations, influences their enterprise growth. It provides a novel, in-depth analysis of how immigrant entrepreneurs leverage self-efficacy and social capital to navigate the challenges posed by the regulatory institutional environment. The study was conducted in South Africa using primary survey data, analyzed through Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) to test the proposed hypotheses. The findings indicate that entrepreneurial self-efficacy has a positive and significant impact on the growth and innovation performance of immigrant enterprises. However, the moderating effects of institutional factors were not significant in this relationship. This study underscores the importance of key drivers of immigrant entrepreneurship within emerging market contexts. The insights gained may be adapted by immigrant entrepreneurs to their specific local environments. The originality of this research lies in establishing closer empirical connections between previously unlinked factors in the study of immigrant entrepreneurship within an African market context.