Motivation of Japanese Descending Diaspora Entrepreneurs (Motywacja przedsiebiorcow diaspory japonskiej bedacych potomkami emigrantow)

This paper explores entrepreneurial motivation of Japanese diaspora entrepreneurs conduct- ing their business in emerging countries. While diaspora entrepreneurs play an increasingly significant role in the modern transnationalizing economy (Newland & Tanaka, 2010), previ- ous scholars have predominantly focused on those who originate from developing countries and migrate to more developed ones. There are, however, also entrepreneurs who originate from developed countries and establish their business in emerging countries. These people are almost invisible in the previous research even though their entrepreneurial activities are assumed to have positive impacts on the local economy. They transfer knowledge, resources and information from developed countries to emerging countries. In the first place, it sounds rather counter-intuitive that they move from richer and more secure contexts to apparently less attractive conditions. We know still very little about their entrepreneurial motivations. This paper takes a first step to investigate their highly complex motivations by conducting multiple case studies with Japanese entrepreneurs in several emerging countries. The central research question to be answered is: what drives Japanese diasporans to become entrepreneurs in emerging countries? A grounded theory (Charmaz, 2014) approach will be chosen and the empirical data will be analyzed descriptively and coded. At the end of this paper, six main motivational factors are identified through an empirical study.