How cross-culture strategies affect small transnational enterprises’ embeddedness: A dynamic cultural model

Purpose of the article Simultaneously engaging in the dual social embedded environment (home and host country), the concept of transnational entrepreneurs (TEs) has drawn considerable attention in international business and entrepreneurship studies in recent years. Given the importance of local embeddedness for transnational enterprises, the purpose of this research is to develop a systematic understanding of embeddedness in relation to cross-cultural strategy, and identify how different cross-cultural strategies affect the small transnational enterprises’ embeddedness from transnational entrepreneurs’ perspective. Methodology/methods This study employed the longitudinal case study research method from the qualita-tive perspective. 4 case studies were conducted by collecting the combined primary (in-depth interview) and secondary data. The grounded theory-building approach was used for the data analysis. Scientific aim The main social scientific aim of this paper is to contribute to the theory building of interna-tional entrepreneurship sustainability for future development. Findings Based on 4 longitudinal case studies of small transnational firms from emerging economy (EE) to developed economy (DE), we identified 4 different types of embeddednesses: structure embeddeness; institu-tional embeddedness; cognitive embeddedness and personal value embeddedness. By further examining these 4 types of TEs’ embeddednesses, it is found that TEs from EE adapt 4 main cross-cultural strategies in 4 different periods of time: cultural accommodation strategy in preparation stage; cultural compromise strategy in the introduction stage; combination of cultural avoidance and cultural compromise strategy in the growth stage, and finally creating cultural synergies (Cultural infiltrate) during the maturity stage. Conclusions The findings suggest that embeddedness of small transnational enterprises is a dynamic and complex process. Adaptation of different cross-cultural strategies affects 4 types of transnational enterprises’ local embeddednesses at different levels in the host country. Despite the strong robustness of our results, our study has its unavoidable limitations due to the nature barriers of qualitative research method. Future research could replicate our study and validate the generalisation of our phenomenon by employing quantitative methodology.