Are the Self-Employed Really Jacks-of-All-Trades? Testing the Assumptions and Implications of Lazear's Theory of Entrepreneurship with German Data

Abstract

Using a large representative German data set and various concepts of selfemployment, this paper tests the "jack-of-all-trades" view of entrepreneurship by Lazear (AER 2004). Consistent with its theoretical assumptions we find that selfemployed individuals perform more tasks and that their work requires more skills than that of paid employees. In contrast to Lazear's assumptions, however, self-employed individuals do not just need more basic but also more expert skills than employees.Our results also provide only very limited support for the idea that human capital investment patterns differ between those who become self-employed and those ending up in paid employment.

Closing the gender gap in entrepreneurship: The importance of skill variety

“…Interestingly, there is first preliminary empirical evidence suggesting that, on average, woman may develop lower skill variety than men do [15,16]. Our paper builds on this line of research and investigates whether and to what extent gender differences in entrepreneurial skill variety indeed exist and open up early in vocational development, thereby laying the foundations for the gender gap in entrepreneurial intentions in adulthood.…”

“…The respective jack-of-all-trades theory [9] posits that being an entrepreneur requires skills and knowledge in several fields and that people having a varied set of skills and knowledge should therefore be more successful entrepreneurs. There is some empirical evidence that female entrepreneurs have less skill variety compared to male entrepreneurs [15,31,32]. Further, using an all-female sample, [33] found evidence that skill variety is important for the entry decision of women.…”

“…One of the greatest challenges for an entrepreneur is the heterogeneous nature of the entrepreneurial work tasks. In contrast to most jobs in paid employment, where specialization is an asset [9], self-employed persons often profit most from being just the opposite [15]. By possessing a well-diversified set of skills, a jack-of-all-trades is better equipped to master the variety of challenges of starting-up and running a business [25].…”

Specialists, Generalists, or Both? Founders’ Multidimensional Breadth of Experience and Entrepreneurial Ventures’ Fundraising at IPO

“…While generalist founders might have a performance advantage in starting up their organizations because they can perform a wide variety of tasks (Lechmann and Schnabel 2014) and can thus convince early resource providers of their competence to run their ventures (Davidsson andHonig 2003, Vissa 2012), we theorize that during the IPO stage, resource providers are more likely to trust consistent and predictable specialist founders to take ventures to the next performance level. Trust comprises two interrelated cognitive processes: (1) a willingness to accept vulnerability to the actions of another party and (2) positive expectations regarding the other party's intentions, motivations, and behavior despite uncertainty (Lewicki et al 2006, Rousseau et al 1998 6 .…”

Interdisciplinary Skills for STEAM Entrepreneurship Education

“…Lazear finds that the generalists, reflected through a generalized course curriculum, are more likely to start a business after they graduate from an MBA program. Many have gone on to test Lazear’s hypothesis in multiple settings (Lechmann & Schnabel, 2014; Silva, 2007; Stuetzer et al., 2013; Wagner, 2003, 2006) and have supported the argument that a generalized skill set is valuable in self-employment.…”