Entrepreneurship research typically emphasizes firm-level outcomes such as growth and performance. However, people pursue entrepreneurship for deeply personal, idiosyncratic reasons. Therefore, as in ...other self-organized human pursuits, how entrepreneurship relates to fulfillment and well-being is of utmost importance. In this paper, we provide an overview of the well-being concept, related research, and its connection to entrepreneurship. We define entrepreneurial well-being as the experience of satisfaction, positive affect, infrequent negative affect, and psychological functioning in relation to developing, starting, growing, and running an entrepreneurial venture. We explain this definition of entrepreneurial well-being and review significant developments in our field and the broader field of well-being. Highlights of social, technological and institutional trends illustrate key areas for future research that can enhance our understanding of these phenomena. The eight papers in this special issue focus on entrepreneurial well-being each offering a specific perspective on how scholars can theorize and study the antecedents and consequences of entrepreneurship related to well-being.
•The special issue explores the relationship between entrepreneurship and well-being.•We offer a definition of well-being that integrates hedonic and eudaimonic perspectives.•The eight papers in the special issue offer a multidisciplinary view by drawing on various theoretical traditions, data sources, measurement, and empirical approaches.•We offer six directions for future research that call for embedding the conversation in the context of socio-economic change.•We highlight alternative methodological approaches that can be used to explore the topic.
Drawing upon the Job Demand-Control (JDC) model, this study investigates differences in work-related stress between the self-employed and wage workers. The JDC model postulates that job demand ...increases work-related stress, whereas job control reduces it (also by weakening the effect of job demand on work-related stress). Based on this model, we predict that the self-employed experience less work-related stress than wage workers. Empirical analysis of a longitudinal sample from Australia (2005–2013) confirms our expectations and demonstrates that job control fully mediates the negative relationship between self-employment and work-related stress. Further analyses show that self-employed individuals with employees experience more work-related stress than those without employees because of higher job demand.
•The Job Demand-Control model is used to understand origins of work-related stress.•A longitudinal Australian sample (HILDA; 2005–2013) is analyzed.•The self-employed report significantly less work-related stress than wage workers.•Job control fully mediates the relationship between self-employment and stress.•The self-employed with employees report more stress than those without employees.
Relying on theoretical insights from the Job Demand-Control model, which links occupational characteristics to health, this paper provides the first causal evidence of the physical and mental health ...consequences of self-employment. I utilize German longitudinal data for the period 2002–2014 and difference-in-differences estimations to study switches from unemployment to self-employment (necessity entrepreneurship) and transitions from regular- to self-employment (opportunity entrepreneurship). I find that necessity entrepreneurs experience improvements in their mental but not physical health, while opportunity entrepreneurship leads to both physical and mental health gains. Importantly, the health improvements cannot be explained by changes in income or working conditions and are not driven by personality and risk preferences or the local unemployment conditions. As such, the findings highlight an additional non-monetary benefit of self-employment and have implications for entrepreneurship theory and practice, current and would-be entrepreneurs, as well as policy-makers.
Aim
To understand self‐employed long‐term‐care workers' experiences of precariousness, and to unravel how their experiences are shaped at the intersection of gender, class, race, migration and age.
...Background
In the Netherlands, increasing numbers of nurses and nursing aides in long‐term care (LTC) opt for self‐employment. Societal organizations and policy makers express concerns about this development, as self‐employment is seen as a risk factor for poor health. Self‐employment is not necessarily precarious work but can contribute to the precariousness of specific groups. Knowledge about inequities among self‐employed nurses and nursing aides in long‐term care is lacking.
Design
A participatory, qualitative interview study. The research team consisted of four academic researchers and five (un)paid care workers.
Methods
Semi‐structured interviews with 23 self‐employed nurses and nursing aides in LTC (2019–2020). Data were analysed from an intersectional perspective.
Results
First, we describe that feeling precarious as a hired employee—due to increasing workloads, health risks, poverty and discrimination—shapes care workers' choice for self‐employment. Second, we describe inequities between self‐employed care workers who could (financially) afford to turn to self‐employment as a health strategy and those who felt squeezed out of the organizations due to poverty or discrimination. They more often dealt with precarious work in the context of precarious lives, negatively impacting their health. Third, we describe how negotiating an entrepreneurial identity with a caring identity required material sacrifices and thus contributed to self‐employed care workers' financial precariousness, particularly as women.
Conclusion
Our findings indicate that working in LTC is becoming increasingly precarious for all care workers, both for hired and self‐employed, with younger, lower‐paid and racialized women with unpaid caring responsibilities seemingly most at risk for precariousness.
Impact
Our findings urge policy makers and care organizations to develop gender and diversity‐sensitive policy responses to address these inequities.
Education is considered one of the most critical human capital investments. But does formal educational attainment "pay off" in terms of job satisfaction? To answer this question, in Study 1 we use a ...meta-analytic technique to examine the correlation between educational attainment and job satisfaction (k = 74, N = 134,924) and find an effect size close to zero. We then build on the job demands-resources (JD-R) model and research that distinguishes between working conditions and perceived stress to theorize that educational attainment involves notable trade-offs. In Study 2 we develop and test a multipath, two-stage mediation model using a nationally representative sample to explore this idea. We find that, while better-educated individuals enjoy greater job resources (income, job autonomy, and job variety), they also tend to incur greater job demands (work hours, task pressure, job intensity, and time urgency). On average, these demands are associated with increased job stress and decreased job satisfaction, largely offsetting the positive gains associated with greater resources. Given that the net relationship between education and job satisfaction emerges as weakly negative, we highlight that important trade-offs underlie the education-job satisfaction link. In supplemental analyses, we identify boundary conditions based on gender and self-employment status (such that being female exacerbates, and being self-employed attenuates, the negative association between education and job satisfaction). Finally, we discuss the practical implications for individuals and organizations, as well as alternative explanations for the education-job satisfaction link.
This paper launches a discussion for using privilege to understand migrant self-employment. Migrants are a heterogeneous and complex group, yet migrant self-employment studies have not yet considered ...how privilege provides opportunities or gains. Using mixed-methods this paper explores the role of privilege in migrant self-employment. Life course histories are combined with full-population register data to understand migrant self-employment and to provide a sense of privilege in process. Findings reveal theoretically and empirically how privilege shapes self-employment for women migrants in Sweden with certain groups benefitting more from privilege.
This article challenges the assumption that the factors associated with the self-employment choices of women differ from those of men; specifically, we test the extent to which women are influenced ...by standard economic factors compared with family and social issues. We find that economic factors influence the self-employment choices made by men and by women in the long and short-run. Although some findings were sensitive to the chosen self-employment measure our short-run findings, in particular, are at variance with the interpretation that self-employed women are less likely to be influenced by economic factors than their male counterparts. Consequently, we argue that gender-based explanations have exaggerated the importance of social factors in the self-employment choices made by women.
•Economic factors influence long and short-run self-employment for men and women.•Unemployment only raises self-employment rates for men in the long-run.•Self-employment to employee earnings ratios only affects women in the long-run but men and women in the short-run.•GDP and house prices have a more powerful impact upon women.•Family structure factors influences men and women but in different time horizons.
Health insurance can have important effects on self-employment and self-employment transitions. However, there is a literature gap on the relationship between health insurance and self-employment in ...low- and middle-income countries, especially in the context of the rapid expansion of health insurance in these countries. This article examines this relationship in Vietnam with a focus on a comparison between the voluntary scheme for the informal sector (mostly self-employed workers) and compulsory insurance for the formal sector (mostly wage workers). We employ a Probit model with selection on a panel from the Vietnamese Household Living Standards Surveys 2010-2014 to investigate the association between health insurance and self-employment entry and exit. We show that those with compulsory health insurance in Vietnam, the formal workers, are 10 percentage points less likely to enter self-employment than those having voluntary insurance. Regarding self-employment exit, people with compulsory insurance are more likely to exit self-employment compared with those covered by voluntary insurance. However, the effect size is relatively small.
The Internet has transformed economic activities in many important ways over the past two decades. This study examines the role of the Internet in narrowing the gender gap in entrepreneurship. ...Building on the assumptions that the Internet facilitates information transmission and breaks down information barriers for aspiring entrepreneurs, the study hypothesizes that (a) the Internet narrows the gender gap in the probability of entrepreneurship, and (b) the gender gap–mitigating effect of the Internet is stronger for the more disadvantaged members of society. These hypotheses are tested with six waves of data from the China Family Panel Studies, a nationally representative longitudinal survey series from 2010 to 2020. Empirical evidence based on the analysis of 25,177 individuals confirms that Internet use is associated with a narrower gender gap in entrepreneurship. In addition, the gender gap–mitigating effect of the Internet is stronger for less educated individuals and those who live in regions with a lower level of gender equality. The gender gap–mitigating effect of the Internet is also stronger for informal (rather than formal) entrepreneurship. The Internet appears to have a democratizing effect by facilitating entrepreneurship among the more socially and economically disadvantaged subsets of society.
•Internet-use helps mitigate gender gap in the probability of entrepreneurship.•The gender gap-mitigating effect of the Internet is stronger among the less-educated sub-population.•The gender gap-mitigating effect of the Internet is stronger among individuals in regions of lower gender equality.•The gender gap-mitigating effect of the Internet is stronger for informal entrepreneurship than formal entrepreneurship.
PDF
