Determinants of successful immigrant entrepreneurship in the Federal Republic of Germany [Elektronische Ressource] / vorgelegt von Nikolinka Fertala

Walter Hawkins

Informations

• Publié par: eberhard_karls_universitat_tubingen
• Publié le: 01 janvier 2006
• Nombre de lectures: 35
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Determinants of Successful Immigrant Entrepreneurship in
the Federal Republic of Germany




Inaugural-Dissertation
zur Erlangung des Doktorgrades
der Wirtschaftswissenschaftlichen Fakultät
der Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen




vorgelegt von


Nikolinka Fertala
aus Razgrad



2006


II




























Dekan: Professor Dr. pub. oec. Jörg Baten
Erstberichterstatter: Professor Drc. Jörg Baten
Zweitberichterstatter: Professor Dr. rer. pol. Kerstin Pull
Tag der Disputation: 11. November, 2005

III
Nikolinka Fertala


Determinants of Successful Immigrant Entrepreneurship in the
Federal Republic of Germany




















“The entrepreneur is at the same time one of the most intriguing and one of the
most elusive characters … in economic analysis. He has long been recognised as
the apex of the hierarchy that determines the behaviour of the firm and thereby
bears a heavy responsibility for the vitality of the free enterprise society.”

W. J. Baumol (1968: 64) IV
Acknowledgements
During my research years in Tübingen, I received generous assistance from many
people and institutions all over the world. I am particularly grateful to my supervisor
Professor Jörg Baten for his persistent support during the days of obscurity and
suffering, which are the inseparable companions of each and every PhD scholar. Even
more importantly, he encouraged me as well to apply for and attend several
international conferences, and to present my research there. I wish to thank Professor
Werner Neus for his valuable comments, critical questions, and his active role in the
discussion when I presented my working papers in the colloquium organised by the
graduate school in Tübingen.
My dissertation project is based on five working papers, which contribute to one
single story; namely, what are the factors driving immigrants in Germany to establish
their own businesses, and on the other hand which are the crucial determinants leading
to entrepreneurial success. All five papers were presented at international conferences,
thus I wish to express my gratitude for the various comments I received. I am much
indebted to Professor Leo Dana who agreed to publish my study entitled ‘Do human
and social capital investments influence survival? A study of immigrant
entrepreneurship in Upper Bavaria’ as invited paper in the International Journal of
Entrepreneurship and Small Business. He even gave me the freedom to write a chapter
in the edited book Ethnic Minorities in Entrepreneurship, London, Edward Elgar, which
I entitled ‘Immigrant entrepreneurship in Germany: Working on the fringes or
deliberate self-decision’. While corresponding with him, I mentioned my study on
homophily and economic performance of immigrant entrepreneurs, thus he became
fascinated and approved to publication the paper entitled ‘Do birds of a feather flock
together and perform economically better? A study of homophily paradox among
immigrant entrepreneurs in Germany’.
My first paper ‘Immigrant’s propensity to self-employment in Germany” was
rdpresented at the 3 International Conference ‘Entrepreneurship, Employment, and
Beyond’ in Krakow 2003. Thus, I wish to thank Professor Jan Targalski and Professor
Karl Gratzer for the challenging debates and excellent comments. My paper ‘Do human
and social capital investments influence survival? A study of immigrant
thentrepreneurship in Upper Bavaria’ was presented at the 24 Babson Kaufmann
Entrepreneurship Research Conference, the most world-wide recognised conference in V
the field of entrepreneurship research, which took place in Glasgow 2004. I owe special
thanks to Professor Teresa Menzies and Professor Howard E. Aldrich who contributed
remarkably to the quality and intensity of the discussion. This paper was also presented
ndat the 2 Interdisciplinary European Conference on Entrepreneurship Research in
Regensburg 2004. Thus, I wish to thank Professor Michael Dowling who organised the
conference for his active role in the discussions. My paper ‘Do birds of a feather flock
together and perform economically better? A study of homophily paradox among
thimmigrant entrepreneurs in Germany’ was presented at the 25 Babson Kaufmann
Entrepreneurship Research Conference, which was held in Boston, the US, 2005,
ndspecial anniversary year, and at the 2 AGSE International Entrepreneurship Research
Exchange in Melbourne, Australia, 2005. I highly appreciated the opportunity to present
my research there.
Furthermore, the scholarship from the German Research Foundation (DFG)
supported my research objectives noticeably and helped me considerably to mitigate the
financial burden imposed by attending international conferences and workshops. The
encouraging atmosphere in the graduate school and in the research group at the
department of economic history facilitated my work progress tremendously. Therefore, I
wish to thank all members of the graduate school and our research group for their
persistent support, especially for the excellent advice of Dominique Adey Balinova
concerning language and style as well as for close friendship.
My greatest debt is to my husband Walter Fertala and my mother Argira for
their warmth and mental support during my research years in Tübingen. This thesis
would not have been feasible without their generosity and understanding for my not
being at home in Vienna. VI
Preface
Before I begin with the serious research issues, I wish to emphasise several basic
considerations regarding entrepreneurship as a subject matter, cited literature, language
and inherent problems while employing empirical methods to data sets. I do strongly
believe in these considerations, and thus I am fully convinced of the fact that they do
contribute to the quality of research.
Entrepreneurship is a subject that is commonly taught and researched in business
schools, but seldom if at all in economics departments. Consequently, most studies on
entrepreneurship tend to be written from a business or management perspective. Such
research often downplays, or ignores altogether, the contribution of modern economics
to our understanding of the subject. Indeed, it is common to find references to ‘the
contribution of economics’ mainly in terms of the treatises of Frank Knight (1921) and
Josef Schumpeter (1934). It is unclear to me why entrepreneurship plays such a
marginal role in most economics departments. It is possible that economists are
suspicious of a subject with an avowedly mongrel provenance, which reflects a
multiplicity of different, and often non-quantitative, perspectives. From a personal
standpoint, the multidisciplinary nature of entrepreneurship posed one of the greatest
challenges in writing this dissertation. It also offered me some of the greatest rewards.
My own view is that the multidisciplinary nature of entrepreneurship is a potential
strength, rather than a weakness. But this potential will be achieved only if we, students
and researchers, take the trouble of breaking the boundaries of narrow scholarship, an
ideal to which my dissertation is dedicated.
Given the multidisciplinary nature of entrepreneurship, fortunately, it is a broad
field of research that creates piles of literature every year; thus, I restricted myself to
essential contributions published in peer-reviewed journals and outstanding edited
volumes. My research also includes topics from econometrics, sociology, and
psychology, which increase additionally the quantity of related literature available.
Consequently, I cite only important sources that are of significant relevance to my
research. In general, I concentrate on the ‘working paper style’, which avoids long-
winded reviews of literature. Conversely, my data sets, methods and results are of main
interest.
Moreover, the primary objective of each and every scientific work is to maintain
readability. Studying the book written by Woodward (1997) helped me to approach this VII
objective more swiftly. To avoid roundabout sentence constructions, which in turn
sound more impressive, Woodward (1997) suggested the active voice in the common
use. ‘I’ and ‘We’ as well as ‘He’ and ‘She’ are alternately chosen in my dissertation.
Finally, empirical researchers wish repeatedly to produce significant results, and
generally only these results are published. Do we not run, therefore, into the troubles of
publication selectivity bias? However, I strongly believe that stating the limitations of
data sets and methods employed is an essential part of each empirical research.
VIII
TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. INTRODUCTION _____________________________________________ 1
1.1 Relevance of the subject immigrant entrepreneurship_________________ 1
1.2 Objective of the thesis _____________________