Returnee entrepreneurial entry decisions among forced and voluntary returnees in Ethiopia: A comparative study

ABSTRACT

Returnee entrepreneurship has become an important topic of interest due both to the increasing number of return migrants and the particular nature of their entrepreneurial activities. In some cases, such as in Taiwan, China, and Israel, voluntary returnees have made a significant impact on their home country’s economic development. However, some expatriates are forced to return due to rapid changes in the political and economic situations of their host countries. We compare and examine these two different cohorts in Ethiopia to understand what attributes are transportable and facilitate entrepreneurship, as well as barriers for the two different groups. Scholarly understanding of what drives returnee entrepreneurial entry decisions remains limited, even more so regarding sub-Sahara Africa. Using the mixed embeddedness perspective, this paper aims to unveil the multi-level drivers of returnee entrepreneurial entry decisions by comparing forced and voluntary returnees to Ethiopia. Based on in-depth interviews with 25 returnees, abductively, the findings indicate the interactive influence of personal and interpersonal factors, simultaneous engagement, and opportunity promise on returnee entrepreneurial entry decisions. Specifically, for the voluntary returnees, childhood aspirations, altruistic desire, simultaneous engagement, and nostalgia, coupled with migration capital and opportunity promise influence their business entry decisions. For the forced returnees, lack of options, regrets about migration, preconceptions, tacit capital, and government support drive their entry decisions. We discuss how these factors are contingent on migrants’ pre-, post-, and during-migration conditions in facilitating returnee entrepreneurship. We also illuminate the distinctive differences between forced and voluntary returnees. Implications for theory and practice are indicated.

KEYWORDS:

• returnee entrepreneurship
• entrepreneurial entry
• voluntary returnee
• forced returnee
• Ethiopia

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Toli J. Amare

Toli J. Amare is currently a PhD candidate in Business Administration at the DeGroote School of Business, McMaster University, Canada. He holds an MBA in Finance from Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia. His research interests include entrepreneurship among immigrants, returnees, refugees, indigenous people, and issues related to management practices in Africa. He can be reached at [email protected]

Benson Honig

Benson Honig (PhD, Stanford University) is the Teresa Cascioli Chair in Entrepreneurial Leadership, DeGroote School of Business, McMaster University, Canada. His research activities include over 120 peer reviewed publications with over 16,000 citations worldwide, focusing on professional ethics as well as subjects such as ingenuity, nascent entrepreneurship, social entrepreneurship, migration issues, and entrepreneurship in transition environments. He is past president of the Canadian Council of Small Business and Entrepreneurship, Past Chair of the Academy of Management's ethics education committee and a founding board member of the Africa Academy of Management. He is also co-founder of the Reframery, a social innovation virtual incubator supporting marginalized entrepreneurs, at www.reframery.org. We target marginalized impacted communities by reducing financial instability, and supporting SMBs and self-employment activities in the pre- and post-COVID eras. We apply research findings to communities in real time, offering support of self-employment training for women, refugees, minorities, immigrants, Indigenous and persons with disabilities, with proprietary research designed instructional tools, coaching, mentoring, and micro-lending at a vastly reduced cost. We are replicating our model for refugee communities ‘left out’ of global markets due to institutional, social and geographic constraints exacerbated by COVID.