How does cultural tightness in the home and host country influence international entrepreneurs’ opportunity recognition: a social network approach

Purpose Social network structures significantly impact business opportunity recognition, but existing evidence reveals that not all social network structures work in favor. This study aims to examine the effects of international entrepreneurs’ network centrality and constraints on opportunity recognition in a host country. Also, it analyzes the contextual mechanism of the home country’s cultural tightness and looseness on the relationships between network structures and opportunity recognition. Design/methodology/approach This study adopts a quantitative research approach, using survey data from 220 international entrepreneurs in China to test the hypotheses through multiple regression analysis. Findings This research finds that international entrepreneurs’ network centrality (not the network constraints) in the host country positively contributes to opportunity recognition. Furthermore, this study suggests that international entrepreneurs’ home country cultural tightness negatively moderates the relationship between network centrality and opportunity recognition. Originality/value This study contributes a novel integrative framework to international entrepreneurship by linking entrepreneurs’ social network structures (centrality and constraint) with their home country cultural tightness. Unlike prior studies that view networks or culture in isolation, this paper demonstrates the cross-level contingency effect between individual embeddedness and societal norms. It responds to recent calls for contextualized models in international opportunity recognition (Pidduck et al., 2024; Wang et al., 2019).