The regulatory, normative and cultural-cognitive dimensions of the returnee opportunity and returnee liability : how institutional migration creates the two sides of the same coin

Abstract

Why do some scholars emphasize the benefits realized by returnee entrepreneurs, whereas others highlight the returnee liability? By analyzing interviews with twenty Kenyan returnee entrepreneurs, we make three contributions to scholarship on returnee entrepreneurship. First, we reconcile two well-developed but separate and almost-contradictory bodies of the extant literature by showing that the returnee opportunity / returnee liability is a duality that all returnee entrepreneurs can expect and must manage, even if their ventures are successful. Returnees might see opportunities in the institutional differences between their home and host countries, but to realize those opportunities as entrepreneurial ventures, they must navigate their homeland’s de-familiarized regulatory, normative and cultural-cognitive macro-level institutional pillars. We show how returnee entrepreneurs navigate these macro-institutions as individuals, leading to our second contribution: Where people are mobile across borders, macro-institutions affect not only organizational processes, but also individuals directly. The theory of individual institutional migration suggests institutional migrants seek to regain personal control vis-à-vis a new institutional domain either by transposing knowledge from the previous institutional environment, or by internalizing the new institutional rules. Our third contribution is to advance that theory by suggesting that returnee entrepreneurs strategically seek to do both: Where they recognize opportunities in the new institutional environment (i.e. returnee opportunity), they transpose knowledge by starting innovative new ventures, but at the same time, the different macro-institutional environment imposes a burden (i.e. returnee liability) that they need to manage to gain acceptance of their ventures.

HIGHLIGHTS • Returnee entrepreneurs are institutional migrants. • They carry the rules from one institutional environment to another. • They navigate macro institutions as individuals. • This results in a duality – both returnee opportunities and a returnee liability. • The duality functions across regulatory, normative and cultural-cognitive pillars.