Entrepreneurial identity play through cross-cultural experience: Insights from returnees

Entrepreneurial identity plays a crucial role in the entrepreneurial process. Although cross-cultural experience likely shapes entrepreneurial identity in enduring ways, we are not clear on how and why. Returnee entrepreneurs, who move between distinct sociocultural contexts, offer a valuable lens to explore how aspects of cross-cultural experience interact with entrepreneurial identity. Incorporating the concept identity play, we aim to explore how returnees process their cross-cultural experience in ways that shape their entrepreneurial identity when venturing back home. Adopting a qualitative design with 12 cases of returnee entrepreneurs, we develop a three-stage process model of identity play through which returnees navigate the differences between the host and home country to construct their entrepreneurial identity: envisioning, enacting, and refining. We suggest that it is the nexus of cross-cultural experience and entrepreneurial activities that this identity play manifests. We make contributions to the literatures on entrepreneurial identity and cross-cultural experience in entrepreneurship. In addition, we contribute to the meaningful heterodoxies section's call for a better understanding of how entrepreneurs moving between distinct cultures select cultural elements to generate valuable heterodoxies.