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Paper info: Interaction and liabilities between native and immigrant firms

Title


Interaction and liabilities between native and immigrant firms

Authors


Matilde Milanesi and
Simone Guercini
Università degli Studi di Firenze
Italy
Simone Guercini

Place of Publication


The paper was published at the 32nd IMP-conference in Poznan, Poland in 2016.

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Abstract


The aim of the paper is to analyse the interaction between native and immigrant firms in local systems focusing on the case of Chinese immigrant firms as a business community settled in a specific territory, that of an Italian industrial district in which native and immigrant entrepreneurs coexist. Such coexistence may represent a fertile ground for the emergence of liabilities, namely the liability of outsidership, a concept borrowed from the literature of management and international business and defined as the difficulties that must be addressed by those who are external to the most effective and important international networks, distinguishing outsiders from insider actors (Johanson & Vahlne, 2009: Schweizer, 2013). Thus, the perspective can be twofold: on one hand, immigrant Chinese firms, despite being insider to global networks, can perceive a liability of outsidership in the local network: on the other hand, native entrepreneurs can perceive a liability of outsidership in the global network in whichimmigrant entrepreneurs are embedded. Native culture firms can experience a relative outsidership with reference to the new global networks dominated by Chinese immigrant companies settled in the same territory. Interacting in business networks, according to the IMP approach (Håkansson et al., 2009), can offer an important perspective to explain the possible exploitation of opportunities as a result of interacting and facing local liabilities. The paper proposes a case study approach in which the empirical setting is represented by an Italian manufacturing area that has experienced huge immigration flows and the establishment of a large Chinese community of people and firms active in the textile industry. The study of interaction patterns allows the authors to highlight the liabilities that may emerge locally, where a transnational oriented business network established by Chinese immigrants and local business networks established by native entrepreneurs coexist. The paper shows that facing (and possibly overcoming) liabilities in interactions between companies based in the same geographical area can boost the development of new combinations of local and transnational business relationships: the interactive perspective adopted in the paper highlights that opportunities, and liabilities, stem from the creation of interactions among migrants and natives actors with specific resources combinations and activity structures at a local and transnational level.