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.

Indications are that the long-term decline of self-employment has come to a halt in the 1970s in the advanced industrialized economies. In this paper, we challenge the currently popular argument that the recent revival of self-employment represents an effective answer to the problems of slow economic growth and unemployment. Our time-series regression analysis of aggregate self-employment rates in eight major OECD countries from the early 1950s to 1987 suggests that rising self-employment may be a response to deficiencies in labour markets rather than a sign of economic vitality.

The paper deals with self-employment of one-(wo)man-firms as the smallest units of entrepreneurial companies and focuses at the blurred boundaries between dependent work and self-employment. We call the overlapping identities hybrid entrepreneurs. Based on the collected data it can be shown that the hybrid self-employed differ significantly from non-hybrid ‘regular’ entrepreneurs with respect to selected socio-demographic characteristics, professional, as well as company-specific factors. The paper takes up several of the findings and tries to discuss them in a framework of (micro) organizations, institutions and self-employment. Taking the case of hybrid employment fosters crucial and provoking questions for an appropriate understanding of the division of enterprises and occupations.

This article examines some institutional-political explanations for the revival of self-employment in seventeen OECD countries since the 1970s. The empirical analysis suggests that cross-country differences in the self-employment rate are partly explained by the generosity of unemployment insurance schemes, left party strength, the size of the state sector, as well as general economic conditions.

Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to analyse the effect of job satisfaction on the intended retirement age of self-employed and organisationally-employed white-collar professionals. The analysis also examines potential boundary conditions imposed by other domains of life for the applicability of this relationship. Design/methodology/approach -The study employs ordered probit regressions to analyse primary survey data comprising 1,262 Finnish white-collar professionals. Findings -The econometric results suggest that job satisfaction is a significant determinant of the intention to retire later and thus prolong a career. The analysis does not find a difference in the effect of job satisfaction between salary earners and self-employed individuals. However, the analysis finds that other domains of life influence how job satisfaction affects retirement-age intentions, and that these influences differ between self-employed and salaried respondents. Practical implications -The findings imply that developing measures to improve the job satisfaction of (highly educated) older workers is an alternative to the widely debated regulatory approach of prolonging working careers by increasing the statutory retirement age. The principal limitation is the focus on white-collar professionals in a single country. Originality/value -This is the first empirical comparison of the effect of job satisfaction on the intended retirement age between salary earners and self-employed individuals. It is also the first examination of the effect of job satisfaction on retirement intentions or behaviour that accounts for the effects of other domains of life satisfaction.