Use of MOOC and Digital Technologies to Study Effects of Liability of Foreignness on Venture Formation in Forced Immigration - Case Study of Refugee Entrepreneurship in Ethiopia

This study presents how online platforms and digital technologies can be game-changing to address socio-economic problems in the world via teaching entrepreneurship. We used these methodologies along with data and matching algorithms to expand the application of the concept of Liability of Foreignness (LOF) to individuals forced to migrate. Our nine-week-long entrepreneurship course rendered over a MOOC platform edX sheds light on how LOF affects new business formation activity during forced immigration. The Ethiopian refugee movement forms an ideal and natural setting of forced immigration where there is no choice given for destination and environment. Such a setting is in stark contrast to at-will immigration, hence the results of previous literature on this topic are primarily incompatible with our use case of refugees. We showcase how technology was critical to understand the impact of LOF on the refugee entrepreneurship journey, specifically their team formation and opportunity recognition steps. Using an abductive methodology, we propose that LOF has a temporal effect on the team formation strategy of refugees, which changes from resource seeking to interpersonal relations. Furthermore, we showcase that LOF affects the type of opportunities that refugees recognize in their environment. These results would not have been possible without the online education platform, interactivity of course participants, and use of data analytics combined with matching algorithms.