Human capital theory – developed by neoclassical economists like Gary Becker and Theodore Schultz – is widely considered a useful way to explain how employees might enhance their value in ...organizations, leading to improved skill, autonomy and socio-economic wellbeing. This essay argues the opposite. Human capital theory implies that employees should bear the costs (and benefits) of their investment. Highly individualized training and work practices are an inevitable corollary. Self-employment, portfolio careers, the ‘gig economy’ and on-demand business models (including Uber and Deliveroo) faithfully reflect the assumptions that inform human capital theory. I term this the radical responsibilization of the workforce and link it to growing economic insecurity, low productivity, diminished autonomy and worrying levels of personal debt. The essay concludes by proposing some possible solutions.
Urban and regional research has focused on opportunity entrepreneurship and how cities can promote growth through the ‘right’ type of entrepreneurship. This neglects the increasing risk of precarious ...self-employment reflected in the compositional change of self-employment towards self-employment with no employees (‘solo self-employment’). This article tests whether precarious self-employment is more prevalent in urban areas, in parallel to more entrepreneurial forms as shown in previous research. Based on the European Working Conditions Survey 2015 and including 30 countries, it proposes a multidimensional empirical framework of precariousness of self-employment. Findings show significant variations in the prevalence of precarious self-employment in urban versus non-urban areas across geographical regions. Some individual characteristics (gender) and job-related characteristics (industry and working at home) are related with an increased risk of precariousness in urban areas. Policies therefore need to go beyond regulatory and legal frameworks and target local conditions of self-employment.
This study aims to untangle the role of risk propensity as a predictor of self-employment entry and self-employment survival. More specifically, it examines whether the potentially positive effect of ...risk propensity on the decision to become self-employed turns curvilinear when it comes to the survival of the business. Building on a longitudinal sample of 4,973 individuals from the German Socio-Economic Panel, we used event history analyses to evaluate the influence of risk propensity on self-employment over a 7-year time period. Results indicated that whereas high levels of risk propensity positively predicted the decision to become self-employed, the relationship between risk propensity and self-employment survival followed an inverted U-shaped curve.
This article focuses on the ‘hybridity’ of solo self-employment by shedding light on the lived experiences and meanings of the subjects within their institutional and socio-economic contexts. It ...offers an original perspective to the study of the hybridization of work by linking the subjective and objective conditions underpinning solo self-employed workers. The study found that solo self-employed workers exercise agency over their working lives while facing high levels of insecurity, and that their contextualized experiences are related to the dominant narratives about self-employment. At the same time, however, findings also show that solo self-employed are engaged in (re)-constructing their alternative and dissonant narratives as well.
We advance both mobility and paradox theorizing by advocating the new concepts of ‘mobility‐isolation paradox’ and ‘paradoxical imagination’. These emerged from examining the nuanced, multifaceted ...conceptualizations of the mobility‐isolation tensions facing home‐based, self‐employed, online knowledge‐workers. We thereby enhance current conceptual understandings of mobility, isolation and paradox by analyzing knowledge‐workers’ interrelated, multidimensional experiences within restrictive home‐based working contexts. We compare the dearth of research and theorizing about these autonomous online knowledge‐workers with that available about other types of knowledge‐workers, such as online home‐based employees, and the more physically/corporeally mobile self‐employed. This research into an increasingly prevalent knowledge‐worker genre addresses these knowledge gaps by analyzing home‐based knowledge‐workers’ views, and tensions from paradoxical pressures to be corporeally mobile and less isolated. Despite enjoying career, mental and virtual mobility through internet‐connectedness, they were found to seek face‐to‐face social and/or professional interactions, their isolation engendering loneliness, despite their solitude paradoxically often fostering creativity and innovation.
Does self-employment reduce unemployment? Thurik, A. Roy; Carree, Martin A.; van Stel, André ...
Journal of business venturing,
11/2008, Letnik:
23, Številka:
6
Journal Article
Recenzirano
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This paper investigates the dynamic relationship between self-employment and unemployment rates. On the one hand, high unemployment rates may lead to start-up activity of self-employed individuals ...(the “refugee” effect). On the other hand, higher rates of self-employment may indicate increased entrepreneurial activity reducing unemployment in subsequent periods (the “entrepreneurial” effect). This paper introduces a new two-equation vector autoregression model capable of reconciling these ambiguities and estimates it for data from 23 OECD countries between 1974 and 2002. The empirical results confirm the existence of two distinct relationships between unemployment and self-employment: the “refugee” and “entrepreneurial” effects. We also find that the “entrepreneurial” effects are considerably stronger than the “refugee” effects.
By taking an historical perspective, and by drawing on our own empirical work from the UK in the 1980s and more recently, we argue three main things. First, we need to understand the particular ...conditions of ‘the gig economy’ as a concentrated form of a more general de-standardisation of employment that has brought multiple forms of insecure work. Second, although there is clamour and excitement about ‘the gig economy’ in fact it shares strong parallels with earlier forms of insecure enterprise. Third, while not uniform nor as yet fully empirically demonstrated, young adults’ encounters with the ‘gig economy’ and other aspects of the contemporary labour market (such as the ‘low-pay, no-pay’ cycle, self-employment, ‘zero-hours contracts’) appear to be typified by a lack of choice and control, and experiences of disempowerment, low pay, degraded work conditions, alienation, anxiety and insecurity. This stands at odds with more celebratory proclamations about ‘the gig economy’.
Conventional discourses about self-employment are unsatisfactory since there is no clear acknowledgment of its heterogeneity. Interpretations tend to refer to an average type that does not exist in ...practice, and there are problems of coherence, demarcations, and overlap. Examining macro-level patterns of self-employment, a number of patterns emerge. First, self-employment includes both marginal and privileged positions, within individual countries and also in international comparisons. It can put people at risk of precariousness and poverty or it can be a vehicle to bring wealth to individuals and enterprises, contributing jobs and economic growth to society. Second, people increasingly switch between wage- or salary-dependent labor and self-employment and hybrid forms of employment, as forms of micro entrepreneurship are combined with dependent labor. Third, internationally, the ratio of women in solo self-employment is higher than that of men. Fourth, remarkable differences exist at the level of solo self-employment.
FREELANCE FORUM Bass, Brian; Bogen, Melissa L; de Milto, Lori ...
American Medical Writers Association AMWA journal,
12/2019, Letnik:
34, Številka:
4
Journal Article
This article aims to investigate how job satisfaction varies for different types of self-employment classified on the basis of working conditions – genuine vs. dependent – and the motivation to enter ...self-employment – voluntary vs. involuntary – in different institutional contexts. First, it analyses how job satisfaction is affected by the cumulative experience of different forms of economic and operational dependency, and by the involuntariness of entering self-employment. Second, it studies how differences in job satisfaction between types of self-employment are modulated by the country's entrepreneurship support environment. The analyses are based on the 2017 ad-hoc module on self-employment of the EU-LFS. Results show that the negative consequences of being self-employed on an involuntary basis, the accumulation of forms of dependency, and the lack of business opportunities all influence the job satisfaction of the self-employed without employees and small entrepreneurs.
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