Networking and culture in entrepreneurship

Case studies on three diverse cultural groups are used to investigate how culture norms and practices moderate the way entrepreneurs utilize social networking. Moving away from a universalist mono-dimensional position, prior research calls for studies on how culture moderates entrepreneurial networking. Understandably, the concept of a national culture inevitably refers to the mainstream culture which fails to address the sub-culture and minority culture. This paper explores entrepreneurial networking across three cultures (one mainstream culture and two minority) allowing the researcher an insight into how culture moderates entrepreneurial networking. The empirical results reveal variform universality of entrepreneurial networking in two ways: (1) seven drivers moderate how entrepreneurial networking is practiced across cultures, and (2) being embedded in a mainstream culture rather than a minority culture moderates how entrepreneurial networking is practiced.