Isomorphic immigrant effect in foreign entry

The key problem for commitment to international business activities is the limited knowledge of a host country. A firm's host country experience and its history of entry patterns in other countries shape entry preferences into a foreign country (Pan and Tse, 2000; Chung and Enderwick, 2001; Yiu and Makino, 2002; Li and Meyer, 2008). In the past decade, scholars became aware of the effect of a specific kind of international experience within the firm: the immigrant effect (Chung and Enderwick, 2001; Tadesse and White, 2008; White and Tadesse, 2008; Madhavan and Iriyama, 2009). The present paper reports on the role immigrants fulfil in foreign entry plans and how their involvement relates to the outcome of the foreign entry go/no-go decision. Findings confirm that among the firms that continue in entry, the presence of immigrants in the firm is relatively high. But, and this is unexpected, the same is true for firms that cancel entry plans (Oortwijn, 2010a).