Transgenerational Intent of Taiwanese Business Families: Immigrant Context as Exposure to Country Differences in Family Logic

We conceive the immigrant context as exposure to foreign logics and examine the impact of such immigrant context on the transgenerational intent of Chinese immigrant business families in Australia. Our study makes contribution to two literatures. First of all, we contribute to the literature on institutional logics. Although the institutional logics perspective is understood to be a new approach to culture and process, there has been little application of the logics perspective to cross-cultural context. We develop a framework that portrays immigrants’ experiences as encountering conflicting logics between home and host country. Our framework entails: 1) a typology of logics differences that immigrants may encounter between home and host country; 2) response strategies they may adopt; and 3) key factors that may impact their responses. Secondly, we contribute to the literature on immigrant entrepreneurship. Using our framework on immigrant context as the theoretical basis, we explore the influence that conflicting family logics can have for immigrant families who run family-controlled businesses, with a focus on their transgenerational intent. Extant literature in immigrant entrepreneurship shows that the immigrant context tends to facilitate family involvement in the start-ups of migrant enterprises. However, an issue that has rarely been examined is whether such family involvement is likely to extend beyond the first generation. We look at the role that immigrant context may play in this matter by exploring how conflicting family logics in immigrant business families exert influence on the transgenerational intent of their members. We conducted an exploratory study of a sample of family members of Chinese immigrants from Taiwan and China who operate businesses in the Brisbane and Gold Coast area in Australia. Quantitative as well as qualitative data were collected. In step one, we passed questionnaires to our participants with each business family as unit of analysis. At least one parent and one child were asked to fill out a survey. Our survey mainly measures two constructs, parental psychological control and children filial piety, as proxies for the extent to which the family logic of Chinese immigrant business family members were influenced by the host country context. We aimed to link the scores from these measures to the scores participants provided for transgenerational intent. In step two, we interviewed a portion of our business families about their scoring for parental psychological control and children filial piety. Through these interviews, we were able to collect qualitative data about the nature of conflicting family logics parents and children experienced, why such conflicts might exist, and how they were handled. Data from our research have yet to be analyzed. Hence, at this time, we are not able to report on the results. However, our research aims to go beyond host country policies, opportunity structure, and individual resources to tell a more intimate story about immigration: Immigrant families experience conflicting logics, they respond in various ways, and many factors affects their responses, which in turn lead to orientations associated with their businesses.