Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Drawing from a qualitative pilot study on Northern Virginia immigrant Latinos, this paper will address an important aspect of the immigrant experience that has unfortunately received little emphasis: the entrepreneurial capacity of skilled Latino and Latina workers in both manual and professional occupations. The question that drives our research is straightforward: What social factors help explain why rates of Latino business formation and self-employment –the traditional routes to immigrant integration and empowerment— have lagged behind those of other immigrant groups? Through in-depth interviews (N=75) with Latino and Latina immigrants from both working- and middle-class backgrounds, we will examine the degree to which social, organizational and cultural factors impinge on their economic activities. We expect preliminary findings of this study will draw attention to the multiple contributions the Latino community stands to make through the establishment of business ventures that can provide levels of economic integration and growth that have not yet been fully tapped. Further, we anticipate that such findings will be of use to social policies adopted by decision makers in the region, including human service organizations, business groups, and non-governmental organizations as well.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Many recent studies of Congress and foreign policy have concluded that the institution frequently has greater influence on foreign policy than conventional wisdom has allowed. Such analyses typically conclude that the size, structure, powers and procedures of the Senate provides the chamber and its individual members with greater incentives and opportunities to affect foreign policy. Our analysis compares congressional behavior and influence in each chamber of Congress, focusing on the nature, role, and behavior of congressional foreign policy entrepreneurs, individual members of Congress who initiate action on their own foreign policy agenda without awaiting action from the administration. Earlier analyses have indicated that that most of these entrepreneurs are found in the Senate. Nonetheless, many congressional foreign policy entrepreneurs can be found in the House of Representatives. This paper compares the House and Senate entrepreneurs across the periods of the Cold War Consensus (1946-1967), the Cold War Dissensus (1968-1989), and the Post-Cold War (1990-1998) eras. It examines foreign policy entrepreneurs across a number of factors, including partisanship, legislative access points, and legislative tactics, exposing key shifts in such patterns over time. We test hypotheses about the characteristics and behavior of entrepreneurs in each house of Congress using a data set of 2,621 instances of entrepreneurial behavior across the post-World War II period. Our analysis sheds light on the patterns of activity and influence as well as the similarities and differences in entrepreneurship from each house over time.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This research is to study the diffusion(reinvention) of the silicon Valley model in China from a comparative perspective. How has China been learning from the Silicon Valley model and developing its own high-tech industry? Compared with the other Asian countries, I argue that the development of high-tech industry in China is a distinctive process of top-down institutionalization of bottom-up regional experimentation, the results of this experimental learning have largely depended on the quality of the locally constructed social capital. This study is a cross-country two level comparison with a focus on China. At the national level, I argue for the importance of the tolerance of the national system for the experimentation of the regional innovation systems; at the (sub-nation) regional level, I emphasize the importance of the quality of social capital. Based on a review of the relevant literature, I will try to integrate the national innovation system approach , the regional innovation system approach and the two competing theories of social capital into a unified theoretical framework. The development of the high-tech industry in Asian countries has clearly exhibited a new mode of industrial developmet. it shows development as a reflexive social experimentation which goes beyond the theorization of modernization theory, dependency theory and the word system theory. The paper will be structured as the following: Part One Introduction Part Two A theoretical framework and the hypotheses Part Three A comparative perspective Part Four The Chinese case and cases Part Five Conclusion The primary goal of the first two parts is to provide a background and a theoretical framework for the analysis of the cases. In addition, I will have a discussion about the nature of the silicon Valley model in Part Two. It is arguable that the Silicon Valley model is different from the traditional Marshall type of industrial district and the industrial cluster ( Porter, 1990). The traditional industrial district approach is more about the homogenity of inter-firm relations, the innovative milieu tends to emphasize the openness of the network and its capacity to participate in the dynamic global network. Localization is not an antithesis of globalization, but goes along with globalization hand in hand(Castells, 1997). Many of the innovative milieus are glocal , We should examine how their local synergy and global linkage are mutually conditioned. Part three and Part four are case studies. I will primarily use the secondary materials for part three. Part four is the focus of this research, It will be based on the original documents and the first-hand materials that I have collected in China. In part three, I will select the Technopolis program case in Japan, the Hsinchu case in Taiwan, the Bangalore case in India and the Singapore Case. I selected these cases for two reasons. Firstly, these cases clearly show that high resources itself doesn't guarantee success, The Japanese Technopolis program represents a top-down approach. The MITI intervened too directly , and the development process is too standardized, it is hard to develop the local social synergy.(Castells, 1994). The current Globalization driven by the development of information technology has posed serious challenge for the catching-up thinking embodied in the Japanese model6; The two most famous high-tech zones in Asia------Hsinchu in Taiwan and Bangalore in India----- are both closely connected to Silicon Valley through immigrant engineer network. The IT industries in Taiwan and India benefited from the linkage with Silicon Valley, they are more bottom-up and emerged more or less independent of the government effort( Saxenian1997). Secondly, the experience of these innovation efforts have become the genuine sources for China to learn and reflect on the silicon Valley model as a late comer in the high-tech field. Compared with these countries, China has an intentional experimental strategy in learning from these different experiences with a approach of top-down institutionalization of bottom-up experimentation, the Chinese cases are more diversified and complicated. Part four is the focus of this research, I will exmamine the speciality of the high-tech industy in the Chinese political economy. At the beginning, the young high-tech industry in China was developed at a marginal positon in the planned economy , it is less affiliated with center of the power than the other established industries in China. It is less bureaucratically organized, but has little investment from the central government. Compared with the other industries in China, the high-tech industry is more territorially-based and self-reliant, the strong regional identity characterizes the high-tech industry in China. The critical learning of the experience of the different versions of Silicon Valley helps to shape the innovative milieus in China. The experiment of the inspired the local , and even the Torch program( a national program to promote the development of the high-tech industry in China) is inspired by the Japanese Technopolis program. however, China lacks many resources , this makes it impossible for China to take the top-down approach as Japan to ambitiously mass-produce silicon Valley with standardized package of government support , the development of high-tech industry become a nation-wide experiment with the different models as references. Beijing is similar to silicon valley , Shanghai models Taiwan's Hsinchu, Suzhou copies Singapore with the direct assistance of Singapore government. China is embracing and experimenting the various versions of silicon Valley models, this multifaceted and evolutionary processes characterized a Chinese model. The different regions in China have now emerged as many local developmental states, and the Chinese state system is a de-facto federalism(Qian, Weiganst 1993, Shirk 1994, Castlles 1998). The political process of decentralization and internationalization have significant impact on the high-tech industrial parks in China. While the process was initiated by the central government , the local governments are the main carriers of this policy and their efforts are largely out of the local interest(Gu, 1995). This decentralized development is in sharp contrast with the central-government-directed development of the East Asian developmental states. In this sense of tolerating experimentation for new models of innovation, China's national innovation system is the most close to the US national innovation system in the Asian countries. Besides the national market-oriented reform such as property rights and deregulation , China's development of high-tech industry has been especially blessed by this experimental pluralism, this strategy has stimulated learning by doing/learning by exploring, prevented from the institutional lock-in and realistically adapted itself to the local conditions. I will analyze in detail the different transformational paths of three innovative regions in China in my paper. In Part four, I will study three Chinese cases in detail to see how the different types of social capital are constructed at the local level, these cases are the Zhongguancun case in Beijing , the Pudong-Zhangjiang case in Shanghai, the Suzhou case. I will examine the their historical context of , their political and economic structure, and their social identification of development , and the influence of these factors on the social capital of these regions. The Zhongguancun area in Beijing has grown up more naturally , it has evloved into a region with the strongest high-tech entrepreneurship in China, now it is a dense glocal social network.. in Contrast, the Suzhou high-tech park was initiated by the Chinese top Leader's interest in the Singapore model, The Singapore government was directly involved in establishing and managing the industrial park in Suzhou, it heavily use the industrial policy to attract the foreign business, it depends on the exogenous technological capability. The Pudong-Zhangjiang case in Shanghai is somewhere in the middle between developmental style of Beijing and Suzhou, it has tried to model experience of Taiwan. Among the 52 high-tech developmental zones in China , most of the high-tech development zones are not really high- tech except a few of them, most are engaged in imitation and application, they are not successful in the sense of truly innovative high-tech. This , however, doesn't necessarily represent the failure of the experimental strategy. As an unexpected result, many of the high-tech experiment zones in China have become the focal point around which new mode of the governance has developed and have played particular role in the economic reform, and their application -oriented practice has linked the old economy and the new economy , the new economy has developed in China as a way to transform the domestic old economy rather than as an independent sector. This is an distinct aspect of the siliconization discourse in China from the other Asian countries(for example, Banglore in India is more like high-tech oasis, it has less to do with the domestic market) , it has a more profound social influence rather than only technological change.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Relying on survey data from a sample of 63 nonprofit agencies in the Detroit metropolitan area, this paper explores the varied and sometimes unconventional fund-raising strategies employed by nonprofit social service providers in times of economic austerity. A number of factors thought to influence entrepreneurship are examined including the presence of government budget cuts, declining revenues from private donors, board composition, hours devoted to marketing and public relations activities, having a secular orientation, and agency size. Findings indicate that faith-based organizations and those experiencing substantial losses in government contracts and grants are most likely to engage in entrepreneurial behavior. This analysis concludes with a discussion of the implications of nonprofit entrepreneurship with regard to accountability and equitable service distribution.

Publication Type: Invited Paper
Abstract: The National Negro Business League (NNBL), created in 1900 by Booker T. Washington, was the largest, most influential black business and professional organization during the “Golden Age of Black Business” from 1900 to 1930. The early NNBL attracted clubwomen who, like other black entrepreneurs, were supremely confident in their ability to affect the fortunes of the nation as they increased their own. However, most historians of black middle class women place greater emphasis on their social welfare activities despite the fact that many clubwomen derived or supplemented their income with formal and informal business activities. This paper explores how enterprising black women linked their business activities to a progressive social and political agenda during the NNBL’s formative years — despite the fact that both men and women in the NNBL remained ambivalent about the role of women in business and society. The paper moves beyond merely locating clubwomen’s participation in the NNBL to argue that differences based on sex were more than epiphenomenal; they reveal how gender structured conceptions of legitimate and acceptable entrepreneurial and political activities in the NNBL and the black community.