Strategies and Techniques to create and Implement Entrepreneur-ism among the Refugees Resettled in Middle Tennessee

by

Table of Contents

PROBLEM STATEMENT1

THEORY2

defining entrepreneur2

factors affecting self-employment rate and performance3

what does it take to start a small business6

motivation theory10

RESEARCH DESIGN10

Hypotheses11

Participant Selection12

Instruments12

EXPECTED OUTCOMES12

IMPLICATIONS OF THE STUDY13

LIMITATIONS15

REFERENCES16

APPENDIX19

Survey Questionnaire19

Problem Statement

Immigrant entrepreneurship (IE) research is built on idea that immigrant and native entrepreneurs do not compete on an equal footing (Dobbs & Hamilton, 2007). IE scholars have argued that immigrant entrepreneurs are largely disadvantaged in the mainstream economy relative to native entrepreneurs because immigrant entrepreneurs suffer from the unfamiliarity with local economic, social, legal, and cultural circumstances, limited local information networks, and absence of effective relations with local governments, nationalistic costumers, and suppliers (Collins & Low, 2010). Building on these arguments, some researchers have empirically examined the influence of founders. immigrant status on firm performance and found that immigrant-founded new ventures often perform worse relative to native-founded new ventures (Vinogradov & Isaksen, 2008).

The nation's continuing economic slowdown along with increasing costs of doing business has increases the number of American business bankruptcies as evidenced by a 12% increase from 2006 to 2007 (Editorial, 2007). Although minority owned businesses have grown significantly over the past 20 years, these firms continue to lag behind in economic indicators (Kauffman Foundation, 2009). With a growing immigrant population and a growing number of immigrant-owned businesses, this segment will most likely also experience an increase in business failures. With immigrants expected to be the largest demographic group in Tennessee by 2020 (Zaragoza, 2008), a study to determine which knowledge factors contribute most to entrepreneurial success of this segment of the business community will be advantageous to the general economy while at the same time addressing the problem of how to prevent many minority-owned businesses from failing.

The aim of this study will be to propose strategies and techniques likely to create and implement entrepreneur-ism among the refugees resettled in Middle Tennessee. These individuals come from various geographic regions and need to adapt to the American way of doing business. Following are the research questions that will be answered through this study.

Strategies and techniques to create and implement entrepreneur-ism among the refugees resettled in Middle Tennessee. The more specific and focused research questions to be answered are:

How important is access to finances in order to create entrepreneurism among refugees resettled in Middle Tennessee?

What is the role of education in creating entrepreneurism among refugees?

What is the role of knowledge regarding business policies and business laws in order to become an entrepreneur?

What is the relationship between attitude towards risk and becoming an entrepreneur?

How can we create right personalities among refugees resettled in Middle Tennessee that can lead them to become entrepreneurs?

Theory

Defining Entrepreneur

Johnson and Thomas (2008) identified the lack of clarity in conceptual definition as one of the largest obstacles to the development of the field of entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship as a phenomenon is composed of the interaction between lucrative opportunities and enterprising individuals. As such, entrepreneurship is defined conceptually as '... the scholarly examination of how, by whom, and with what ...