An empirical study of how vietnamese entrepreneurs in the overseas education recruitment sector developed the multiplexity in personal networks to advance their businesses, 2000-2020
Creators: name: Nguyen, Viet Anh
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2024

description: In the era of internalisation and globalisation, overseas international education is the inevitable trend in developing countries, leading to extensive studies on topics about international students’ experience, host countries as well as host overseas educational institutions. Nevertheless, overseas educational recruitment (OER) companies, which have contributed considerably to the choice of international students, have been hardly mentioned in the extant literature. Recently, with the emergence of unprecedented events like Covid, the role of those companies is getting increasingly significant. Accordingly, the thesis explored the OER companies in terms of their nascent entrepreneurial period, in which most of them had to face massive challenges of entering the OER competitive market. To overcome the trials, OER entrepreneurs had to call for support from their contacts as well as developed their own networks. In fact, entrepreneurship and networks have always been important topics in business and the literature. However, the complication and deep natureof personal network multiplexity (PNM) in the network of entrepreneurs was hardly exploredin qualitative studies. Therefore, the thesis fills in the gap by capturing the entrepreneurial journey of Vietnam OER entrepreneurs using personal network multiplexity to advance their businesses with the support of empirical qualitative research. The case study approach was used by interviewing seven Vietnamese entrepreneurial companies or agencies that have gone through the TEA stage (Total Early Entrepreneurial Activity), lasting at least 3.5 years in the period from 2000 to 2020. Based on the thematic analysis, five main themes emerged from the data, including entrepreneurial motivation and challenges, dimensions of personal network multiplexity, dimensions of developments, the dynamism of personal network multiplexity, and personal network multiplexity strategy.The implication of the study is to give a better understanding of the PNM activities of entrepreneurs in the context of Vietnam and the OER sector. Furthermore, it also contributed to explaining the dynamic factor in PNM. Most importantly, the study will benefit entrepreneurs who desire to set up their own entrepreneurial company in the OER sector in Vietnam to develop PNM for their entrepreneurial survivability and development. The research also contributed to theoretical implications by filling in the gap about the lack of literature onthe entrepreneurial experience of individuals sharing their networking stories in the OER sector. Besides, the PNM strategies of entrepreneurs in the Covid period drawn from the findings will benefit the richness of the literature on OER entrepreneurship or entrepreneurs in general in unprecedented events. Although the study is carried out on entrepreneurs in one specific country (Vietnam) and a particular sector, the findings are also valid in other countries, cultures, contexts, and sectors. Hence, it will leave much more potential areas for future research.