Qualitative course Proposal - Essay Example

In this study, the researcher used both qualitative and quantitative methods of collecting data to present a more rounded picture of findings. Close ended questionnaires and structured interviews would be used on selected respondents. Overally the study would seek to evaluate the impact of different types of social capital resources on performance of Chinese immigrant business. In recent years there has been growing interest in research on immigrant entrepreneur business activities. There are many researches focusing either on the resource-based view (RBV) or on transaction cost economics (TCE) to explain entrepreneur performance or small and medium enterprise performance.

However, there is very little research that exists which integrates both of these, RBV with focus on social capital and TCE to explain business performance. There are even fewer studies that have considered their joint effects in explaining entrepreneurship within the context of an immigrant scope, or specifically in applying them to immigrant entrepreneur performance. This study presents a new integrated framework that applies theories of RBV with focus on social resources as well as TCE to the phenomenon of immigrant entrepreneurship as shown on Fig. 1, p. 47.

Most existing studies tend to focus only on one type of social capital resource and very few have integrated the different types of social capital resources to explain entrepreneurship, especially immigrant entrepreneurship as shown on Table 3, p. 48). This study takes into account various social resources in explaining Chinese immigrant entrepreneurs. It seeks to investigate the relative impact on performance of Chinese immigrant businesses of different social capital like personal/ethnic resources and relationships that include business networks and personal guanxi networks.

It provides a conceptual framework on how RBV with focus on how social capital facilitates immigrant entrepreneurs in gaining access to certain