Purpose The purpose of this paper is to study the way in which family ties influence the entrepreneurial preparedness of the diaspora family business owner. Design/methodology/approach In-depth interviews were carried out with 15 Cypriot family business owners hosted in various countries. The paper draws on social capital theory and uses an abductive analytical approach. Findings The findings of this paper illustrate that family ties coming from the family across borders play a significant role for diaspora family business owners’ entrepreneurial preparedness. Hidden values deriving from the interpersonal relationships within the family across borders drive the diaspora family business owners to learn upon self-reflection and become entrepreneurially prepared, led by both urgency and esteem. Practical implications This study provides practical implications for the entrepreneurial preparedness of diaspora family business owners and those who wish to become family business owners in a diaspora context. Originality/value This study contributes theoretically through the conceptualization of “family across borders social capital” and “diaspora entrepreneurial preparedness”. It also contributes empirically to the fields of diaspora family business, entrepreneurial learning and diaspora entrepreneurship through new knowledge regarding the role of family across borders social capital in the entrepreneurial preparedness of the diaspora family business owner.

PurposeThis paper aims to understand how immigrant entrepreneurs use digital opportunities to overcome the liability of newness and foreignness and how an immigrant's ethnicity can be digitally performed as an asset in business.Design/methodology/approachThe study adopts an inductive multiple case study approach using social media content. The data consist of over 3,500 posts, images and screenshots from Facebook, Instagram and the webpages of seven successful Vietnamese restaurants in Sweden. Grounded content analysis was conducted using NVivo.FindingsThe findings suggest that digitalising ethnic artifacts can mediate and facilitate three digital performances that together can turn ethnicity from a liability to an asset: (i) preserving performance through digital ethnicising, (ii) embracing performance through digital generativitising and (iii) appropriating performance through digital fusionising. The results support the introduction of a conceptual framework depicting the interwoven duality of horizontal and vertical boundary blurring, in which the former takes place between the offline and online spaces of immigrant businesses, and the latter occurs between the home and host country attachment of the immigrant businesses.Originality/valueThis study responds to calls for understanding how immigrant entrepreneurs can overcome the liability of foreignness. It offers a fresh look at ethnicity, which has been seen in a negative light in the field of immigrant entrepreneurship. This study illuminates that ethnicity can be used as a resource in immigrant entrepreneurship, specifically through the use of digital artifacts and digital platforms.

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