Learning about Small Business Social Responsibility: A Generational Difference among Immigrant Entrepreneurs

first and second generation immigrant entrepreneurs, small business social responsibility (SBSR), entrepreneurial learning, mixed embeddedness

• Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to propose a conceptual framework to assess how first and second generation immigrant entrepreneurs learn about SBSR and how this knowledge influences their SBSR practices.
• Design/methodology/approach: This is a conceptual paper based on a literature review of immigrant entrepreneurs’ mixed embeddedness, small business social responsibility and entrepreneurial learning.
• Findings: It is suggested that first generation immigrant entrepreneurs’ SBSR learning and practices were mostly influenced by embeddedness in their home country culture and second generation by embeddedness in their host country institutional and social contexts. For both groups, human capital can also be an antecedent to SBSR learning and practices.
• Originality: At the theoretical level, the mixed embeddedness approach has been augmented by taking into consideration the influence of the home country culture. In addition, with the increase of immigration in developed countries, the study fills a gap on second generation immigrant entrepreneurs’ SBSR learning.
• Research limitations/implications: The paper proposes a conceptual framework that needs to be tested.
• Practical implications: First and second generation immigrant entrepreneurs should become aware of how to learn about SBSR to blend their businesses into the local context of a host country.
• Social implications: The study calls for policy formulation to educate immigrant entrepreneurs if their SBSR is not well aligned with the host country expectations. Also, this study will shed light on how to provide support to immigrant entrepreneurs who have aligned their SBSR practices with the host country context but wish to do more.