Keywords

1 Introduction

Fatemeh was among my graduate students in University of Tehran’s Faculty of Karafarini. Pulled by seeing opportunities in the market, she started a small business. Her parents, siblings, uncles and grandfathers eagerly advised her on business matters, although they had little experience in starting or running a business. Her grandmothers were searching for a potential husband and found one who had a job that could support a family. He proposed and Fatemeh and both families accepted, so she closed her nascent business, and started a new family.

Ali was another of my students. He had a boyhood dream of starting a business, inspired by an uncle who ran a successful business. Waking up from his dream to harsh reality, he was pushed by the necessity to make a living and considered starting a small business to be more feasible than searching for a job in industry that was downsizing because of the economic sanctions from foreign powers. His family and relatives were keenly advising him, and he also consulted informally with more knowledgeable people on how to start a business. His grandmothers were searching for a potential wife and found one, but Ali evaluated himself as unacceptable to her family because he did not have an income to support a new family. Instead, he abandoned his up-start, left his family, and migrated to the West where he perceived opportunities for starting to be better. In his new host-country he quickly began working long hours cleaning. He brought with him his dream of starting his own business, and met a native entrepreneur Morgan who became his role-model. Like Morgan, he sought advice on starting from knowledgeable people in his work-place, the professions, the market and he also consulted with fellow-entrepreneurs in the Iranian diaspora. Recently I heard that he was starting a promising business, which renewed the search by his grandmothers.

The stories of Fatemeh, Ali and Morgan frame the research question here, how are women and men entrepreneurs networking in private and public spheres, in Iran, in the Iranian diaspora, and in host-societies?

2 Theoretical Background and Hypotheses

This section first conceptualizes migrants’ dual embeddedness in home-society and in host-society, then elaborates on networking as networking in the private sphere and in the public sphere, and uses this for developing hypotheses about how gender affects networking, how culture affects networking, and how also gender in combination with culture influences networking.

2.1 Dual Embeddedness

The young Fatemeh was embedded in her society, networking in the private sphere as may be typical in business life in Iran, and living as women typically do in Iran. Thus she was influenced by institutions in her society, notably by the family as an institution, gender as an institution, and the economy as an institution in Iranian society.

Morgan was embedded in own society, networking as a native entrepreneur in the public sphere as is typical for a business person, influenced by the institutions in the more Western society.

The young Ali was embedded in his Iranian society and networking as is typical for a business man in Iran. He carried his Iranian practices with him when he migrated, and thus his embeddedness in Iranian culture continued in the diaspora. But he also adopted new practices, learning from his role-model Morgan, and thus became embedded in his new society. Ali’s entrepreneurial endeavor in the diaspora was shaped by his two contexts, his dual embeddedness, as an embeddedness in his home-society combined with an embeddedness in his host-society.

Dual embeddedness of migrants, more precisely, refers to their embeddedness in their home-society combined with embeddedness in their host-society (Schøtt 2016, 2017). This conceptualization directs attention to the institutions in the two societies, which regulate, channel, enable and constrain the migrants’ endeavors such as their vocational choices and networking (Hamilton et al. 2008; Mobasher 2004, 2007, 2012). The concept of dual embeddedness thus goes beyond the concept of mixed embeddedness which denotes embeddedness in the host society combined with embeddedness in the diaspora community (Kloosterman et al. 1999).

2.2 Private and Public Spheres

Entrepreneurs frequently need a wide spectrum of knowledge for starting a business, more knowledge and information than they have acquired through education, training and practice (Ashourizadeh et al. 2014, 2015a). They may get advice from family and friends and from people in various other environments (Salaff et al. 2006; Schøtt 2014). These many advisors are drawn from two spheres, the private sphere of family and friends and the public sphere encompassing the work-place, professions, market and also the international environment (Cheraghi and Schøtt 2014; Jensen et al. 2015; Jensen and Schøtt 2015; Schøtt and Cheraghi 2015). The distinction between the private sphere and the public sphere is useful for hypothesizing about how networking is affected by gender and culture.

2.3 Gender Affecting Networking

Gender gaps pervade the various domains of life, with men tending to have higher positions than women (World Economic Forum 2014). Men more frequently than women are intending to start, are starting, and are running a business (Kelley et al. 2015). These are not just overall global tendencies. In every country, of the more than a hundred countries surveyed in the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, men are more likely than women to be working (running a business or be employed), while women are far more likely than men to be home-makers (as seen in the data; Global Entrepreneurship Research Association 2016). In Iran, for example, 55% of the women are home-makers while only 1% of the men are home-makers; conversely, 27% of the men but only 7% of the women are self-employed, and 37% of the men and only 14% of the women are employees (as also seen in the data; Global Entrepreneurship Research Association 2016; see also Sarfaraz 2017). Thus women tend to live in the private sphere, while men live more in the public sphere.

Such gender-roles are influencing networking (Ashourizadeh and Schøtt 2013). In our daily lives, women tend to network extensively in the private sphere, while men tend to network extensively in the public sphere. These tendencies in our daily lives expectedly also prevail in entrepreneurs’ networking for advice. We can formulate this as hypotheses about entrepreneurs:

Hypothesis 1

Gender affects private sphere networking, in that women have more extensive private sphere networks than men.

Hypothesis 2

Gender affects public sphere networking, in that women have less extensive public sphere networks than men.

These two hypotheses focus on Iran and its diaspora but have been supported in a study of the Middle East and North Africa (Ashourizadeh and Schøtt 2013) and in a global study (Schøtt and Cheraghi 2015). The hypotheses will here be retested with a sample of entrepreneurs in Iran, its diaspora and host-countries as a starting point for testing more hypotheses.

2.4 Culture Affecting Networking

People are networking in the context of their culture and society (McCabe et al. 2005; Portes 1995). Traditional culture gives salience to the family as an institution, whereas the family is less salient in modern culture (Inglehart and Welzel 2005). Culture also influences entrepreneurs, so we expect their networking in the private sphere to be more extensive in traditional Iran than in the more modern societies that tend to host migrants (Cheraghi and Schøtt 2015; Cheraghi et al. 2014; Schøtt and Cheraghi 2015). This is stated as a hypothesis,

Hypothesis 3

Private sphere networking is more extensive in Iran than in typical host-societies.

Iranian entrepreneurs in the diaspora remain embedded in Iranian culture, expectedly, so they will also be networking extensively in the private sphere, we hypothesize:

Hypothesis 4

Private sphere networking is more extensive in the Iranian diaspora than in typical host-societies.

As the entrepreneurs in the Iranian diaspora become embedded in their host-society, however, their networking in the private sphere will become like that of the native entrepreneurs in the host-society, we should expect.

The public sphere, conversely, is less salient in traditional culture than in modern culture. This culture also influences entrepreneurs, so their networking in the public sphere tends to be less extensive in Iran than in more modern societies, we hypothesize:

Hypothesis 5

Public sphere networking is less extensive in Iran than in typical host-societies.

The entrepreneurs in the Iranian diaspora carry with them a practice of only sparse networking in the public sphere, so we also hypothesize:

Hypothesis 6

Public sphere networking is less extensive in the Iranian diaspora than in typical host-societies.

But as the entrepreneurs in the Iranian diaspora become embedded in their host-society, they adopt a practice of extensive networking in the public sphere, like the native entrepreneurs, exemplified by Morgan.

2.5 Culture Moderating the Effect of Gender on Networking

Gender directly affects networking, and culture directly affects networking, as hypothesized in the above. Furthermore, gender roles vary from one culture to another, so we should also expect that the gender effects depend on culture (Schøtt and Cheraghi 2015).

Family is more salient for women than for men, around the world, but family is especially salient for women in traditional culture (Inglehart 2003). So for entrepreneurs in Iran we hypothesize:

Hypothesis 7

The effect of gender upon private sphere networking is moderated by Iranian society, in that being woman in Iran boosts the private sphere networking.

The entrepreneurs in the Iranian diaspora maintain some embedding in Iranian culture, so we also hypothesize:

Hypothesis 8

The effect of gender upon private sphere networking is moderated by Iranian diaspora, in that being woman in the diaspora boosts the private sphere networking.

This effect, though, will expectedly diminish as the entrepreneurs in the diaspora become embedded in their host-society.

The public sphere is less salient for women than men, around the world, but the public sphere is even less salient for women in traditional culture (Inglehart 2003). So for the entrepreneurs in Iran we hypothesize:

Hypothesis 9

The effect of gender upon public sphere networking is moderated by Iranian society, in that being woman in Iran reduces the public sphere networking.

The entrepreneurs in the Iranian diaspora carry practices from their home-society with them, so we also hypothesize a similar effect for them:

Hypothesis 10

The effect of gender upon public sphere networking is moderated by Iranian diaspora, in that being woman in the diaspora reduces the public sphere networking.

This moderating effect, though, will expectedly diminish as the diaspora entrepreneurs become embedded in their host-society.

The above ten hypotheses about the two main effects of gender, the four main effects of culture in Iran and the diaspora, and the four effect of gender combined with culture are all represented as ten arrows in Fig. 1.

Fig. 1
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Hypothesized effects

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The ten hypotheses are tested in the following.

3 Research Design

Focus is on the entrepreneurs in the Iranian diaspora, but as they have a dual embeddedness in Iran and in their host-societies, the research design involves comparing three kinds of entrepreneurs: those in the diaspora, those in Iran, and those in the host-societies around the world.

3.1 Sampling

Entrepreneurs and other adults around the world are surveyed annually in the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor project conducted by the consortium Global Entrepreneurship Research Association (Global Entrepreneurship Research Association 2016). In 2012 the GEM survey added questions about migration, also asked in a few countries in 2013 and 2014 (Vorderwülbecke 2013). Most data are readily and freely available (Global Entrepreneurship Research Association 2016).

The GEM survey samples in two stages, first selecting countries and then sampling adults within each selected country. In 2012–14 the survey asked about migration in Iran and 71 other countries with a considerable degree of representativeness of the world, which implies that findings can be generalized.

The survey asked for each respondent’s country of birth and country of birth of father and also of mother. A respondent is here classified as in Iran if interviewed in the survey conducted in Iran, and classified as in the Iranian diaspora if interviewed in the survey conducted in other countries and was born in Iran or at least one parent was born in Iran, and classified as in a host-country if interviewed in another country and some in the Iranian diaspora were also in that country. The thereby identified host-countries were primarily countries in the West and secondarily countries in the Islamic world near Iran. The sample was limited to those entrepreneurs who reported on their networking. Thereby the sampled host-societies were the following nine: Denmark, Ireland, Israel, Luxemburg, Pakistan, Palestine, Qatar, Sweden, and the United States. The total sample comprises 8263 entrepreneurs intending to start, starting or owning-managing a business, with 1330 in Iran, 57 in the Iranian diaspora, and 6876 in the host-societies. The number of respondents in the diaspora is small, limiting the statistical power of the analyses of the diaspora.

3.2 Measurements

This subsection describes the measurement of networking and also some other conditions that will be controlled for in the analyses. The questionnaire is published (Global Entrepreneurship Research Association 2016).

3.2.1 Networking

The network around an entrepreneur is tapped in the GEM survey by asking the entrepreneur to tell who gives advice on the business,

Various people may give you advice on your new business. Have you received advice from any of the following? Your spouse or life-companion? Your parents? Other family or relatives? Friends? Current work colleagues? A current boss? Somebody in another country? Somebody who has come from abroad? Somebody who is starting a business? Somebody with much business experience? A researcher or inventor? A possible investor? A bank? A lawyer? An accountant? A public advising services for business? A firm that you collaborate with? A firm that you compete with? A supplier? A customer?

The network in the private sphere is measured as the number of advisors among the four: spouse, parent, other family, and friends, a measure going from 0 to 4. The network in the public sphere is measured as the number of advisors among the other 16, a measure going from 0 to 16 (Schøtt 2014).

3.2.2 Control Variables

Several conditions are related to networking and to gender or culture, and should be controlled for in the analyses. The regression analyses will use several control variables measured in the GEM survey as follows:

  • Age is measured in years.

  • Education is measured in years.

  • Competence is the mean of three dichotomous measures of self-efficacy, opportunity-alertness and risk-propensity. Self-efficacy is measured by asking Do you have the knowledge, skill and experience required to start a new business? (coded 1 if answer is Yes, and 0 if answer is No).

  • Opportunity-alertness is measured by asking In the next six months, will there be good opportunities for starting a business in the area where you live? (coded 1 if answer is Yes, and 0 if answer is No).

  • Risk-propensity is measured by asking Would fear of failure prevent you from starting a business? (coded 1 if not fearing failure, and 0 if fearing failure).

  • Income is measured by asking each adult for household income, and then classifying the incomes in the sample in each country into thirds, poor third, middle third, and wealthy third in the country, and coding them 1, 2 and 3.

  • Household is number of persons living in the respondent’s household, transformed logarithmically to reduce skew.

  • Phase of the business is measured in three categories, phase of intending to start, phase of trying to start, and operating phase. Dummy variables are used in regression analyses.

4 Results

This section describes the sample, then describes the networks, and then tests the hypotheses.

4.1 Description of the Sample

The means, standard deviations and correlations are shown in Table 1.

Table 1 Means, standard deviations, and correlations (N = 8263 entrepreneurs)
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The correlation between being in Iran and being in a host-society is near −1, of course. Regression modeling considers those in the host-societies as a reference-group, and then uses two dummies as independent variables, namely the dummy for being in Iran and the dummy for being in the diaspora. The correlations among independent variables are all weak (between −0.20 and 0.20), indicating that there will not be any problem of multicollinearity in the regressions.

4.2 Networks

Entrepreneurs’ networking in the private and public spheres was measured by the number of advisors drawn from each sphere, as described above. For each gender in each group the average size of each network is listed in Table 2.

Table 2 Networks in private and public spheres, by community and gender
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Networking in the private sphere is especially extensive for women in Iran, and especially sparse in the Iranian diaspora. Networking in the public sphere is especially extensive for men in the diaspora and in host societies, and especially sparse in Iran.

These averages should not be interpreted causally, or as tests of the hypotheses, because the averages ignore other conditions. Other conditions should be controlled for, as in the next analyses.

4.3 Networks Affected by Gender and Culture: Main Effects

To test the hypotheses about effects on networking we use linear regression, Table 3, showing metric regression coefficients. The entrepreneurs in host-societies are the reference, against which we compare entrepreneurs in Iran and also compare entrepreneurs in the diaspora.

Table 3 Networks in private and public spheres, affected by gender and community
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Hypothesis 1 is that gender affects networking in the private sphere, in that women network more than men in the private sphere. The effect of gender on private sphere networking is not significant. Thus the study provides no support for Hypothesis 1.

Hypothesis 2 is that gender affects networking in the public sphere, in that women network less than men in the public sphere. The effect of being woman on public sphere networking is negative. Thus the evidence supports Hypothesis 2.

Hypothesis 3 is that entrepreneurs in Iran are networking especially much in the private sphere, more than entrepreneurs in the host-societies. The effect upon private sphere networking from being in Iran is positive, supporting Hypothesis 3.

Hypothesis 4 is that entrepreneurs in the Iranian diaspora are also networking especially much in the private sphere. The effect upon private sphere networking from being in the Iranian diaspora is negative, the opposite of the hypothesized effect. This surprising finding calls for rethinking life in the diaspora. An interpretation is that the entrepreneurs in the diaspora have very little family around them, so that they hardly get advice from the private sphere.

Hypothesis 5 is that entrepreneurs in Iran network especially sparsely in the public sphere. The effect upon public sphere networking from being in Iran is negative, supporting Hypothesis 5.

Hypothesis 6 is that entrepreneurs in the Iranian diaspora are networking especially sparsely in the public sphere. The effect upon public sphere networking from being in the diaspora is not significant. Thus the study provides no support for Hypothesis 6.

4.4 Networks Affected by Gender and Culture: Interaction Effects

The further hypotheses about culture moderating effects of gender upon networking are tested by including interaction terms in the regressions, Table 4.

Table 4 Networks in private and public spheres, affected by combination of gender and culture
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Hypothesis 7 is that culture moderates the effect of gender upon private sphere networking, in that women in Iran network especially much in the private sphere. This effect is positive, supporting Hypothesis 7.

Hypothesis 8 is that culture moderates the effect of gender upon private sphere networking, in that women also in the diaspora network especially much in the private sphere. This effect is not significant. Thus the study lends no support for Hypothesis 8.

Hypothesis 9 is that culture moderates the effect of gender upon public sphere networking, in that women in Iran network especially sparsely in the public sphere. This effect is positive, the opposite of the hypothesized effect. This calls for rethinking women entrepreneurs in Iran. An interpretation is that the women entrepreneurs in Iran have passed through a selection process which is more selective than the selection among men, so that only very exceptional women have passed, namely women who network extensively in the public sphere, and thereby create a social capital that enable them to succeed in business.

Hypothesis 10 is that culture moderates the effect of gender upon public sphere networking, in that women in the diaspora network especially sparsely in the public sphere. This effect is not significant. Thus the study lends no support for Hypothesis 10.

In short, the analyses of direct effects and interaction effects supported four of the ten hypotheses. Two effects seemed to be in the opposite direction, and called for post hoc interpretations. Four effects were estimated as insignificant.

5 Conclusions

This conclusion summarizes findings in the study, pinpoints its contributions, considers its limitations, and suggests further research.

5.1 Summary of Findings

The entrepreneurial endeavor in the diaspora was conceptualized as a dual embeddedness, in home-society and in host-society. The networking of entrepreneurs in the diaspora was expected to be a blend of ways of networking in home-society and ways of networking in the host-society. To examine this, a distinction was made between networking in the private sphere and networking in the public sphere.

Gender was found to affect networking, in that women are networking less than men in the public sphere. This finding accords well with the result from a global study (Schøtt and Cheraghi 2015).

Entrepreneurs in Iran are networking especially much in the private sphere and especially sparsely in the public sphere. This finding accords well with the result from global studies of cultural effects (Schøtt and Cheraghi 2015).

Entrepreneurs in the Iranian diaspora are networking especially sparsely in the private sphere. This finding was contrary to expectation. A post hoc interpretation is that entrepreneurs in the diaspora hardly have any family to get advice from.

Women in Iran network especially much in the private sphere. This finding accords well with a global study of effects of gender combined with culture (Schøtt and Cheraghi 2015).

Women in Iran are also networking especially much in the public sphere. This finding is contrary to expectation. An interpretation is that women are highly selected in Iran, and that the process selects women with much social capital in form of a network in the public sphere, which is found to be advantageous (Ashourizadeh et al. 2015b; Cheraghi and Yaghmaei 2017; Schøtt and Cheraghi 2015; Schøtt and Sedaghat 2014).

The significant effects are shown in Fig. 2. A positive effect is symbolized by a solid arrow, and a negative effect is represented as a dotted arrow. The magnitude of an effect, as estimated by the standardized regression coefficient, is shown by the thickness of the arrow.

Fig. 2
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Estimated effects

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5.2 Contributions

The study makes three specific contributions. First, the study contributes to conceptualization of migrant entrepreneurship, specifically by conceptualizing migrant entrepreneurship as a dual embeddedness in home-society and host-society, a conceptualization that enabled specification and testing of hypotheses about migrant entrepreneurship.

Second, the study contributes to understanding social capital in entrepreneurship, specifically by distinguishing between networking in the private sphere and networking in the public sphere, a distinction that enabled specification and testing of hypotheses about gendering and influence of dual embeddedness.

Third, the study contributes to understanding the distinctiveness of entrepreneurship in Iran and in the Iranian diaspora.

5.3 Limitations

The focus on gendering in the Iranian diaspora is limited by the small samples of only 15 women and 42 men entrepreneurs in the diaspora. This entailed low statistical power and few findings concerning the diaspora.

5.4 Further Research

This was a case study focusing on the Iranian diaspora, with its dual embeddedness of gender roles and networking.

One direction of further research is to maintain the focus on Iran and its diaspora and to examine consequences of migration for the adults’ competencies and entrepreneurial intentions, as in the article by Rezaei (2017), for the entrepreneurs’ competencies affecting performance, as in the article by Ashourizadeh (2017), and for the entrepreneurs’ networks affecting performance, as in the article by Cheraghi (2017). Research may broaden the scope from a single country to a region, here the Middle East and North Africa, where a common pressing social issue is inclusion, notably of women, youth and unemployed, into entrepreneurship (Ismail et al. 2017).

Another direction is to investigate migration globally, in the context of institutions and cultures around the world, as currently pursued in the doctoral research by Ashourizadeh. Yet another direction is to examine gender roles globally, in the context of institutions and cultures around the world, as currently pursued in the doctoral research by Cheraghi. Yet another direction is to examine networking globally, in the context of institutions and cultures around the world, as pursued in research by the Schøtt guys (Hovne et al. 2014).