Entrepreneurial homeworkers

Abstract

Nearly 40% of British self-employees are homeworkers. Using a large representative sample of the UK longitudinal survey data, we explore the determinants of self-employed homeworking, distinguishing between genders. We reject the notion that homeworking is a transitional entrepreneurial state that the self-employed “grow out of”, while establishing that both employer status and business structure play an important role in predicting which self-employed become homeworkers. Our findings also shed light on two outstanding puzzles in entrepreneurship scholarship: why so few of the self-employed create jobs for others, and why on average the self-employed suffer an earnings penalty compared with employees.

Solo self-employment, entrepreneurial subjectivity and the security–precarity continuum: Evidence from private tutors in the supplementary education industry

“…In between these poles, there was a range of more and less well-off tutors, depending on their position in a spatially and seasonally variable private tuition market. Greater numbers, however, had an enduring vulnerability due to the lack of social protection (Kim and Parker, 2020;Murgia and Pulignano, 2019), including pensions, that renders their position precarious in their old age. Rather than framing selfemployment in dualist terms of wealth or precarity (Kapelinsky and Shoshana, 2019), this study demonstrates that we need to do more to consider the middle-ground and well as the polar opposites, reflecting conceptually on solo self-employment as an heterogeneous category that spans what has been identified here as a 'security-precarity continuum'.…”

“…The UK has been chosen for the location of the study as self-employment rates grew here from 11.5% to 14.1% between 2000 and 2017, and the proportion of the self-employed who are solo selfemployed also increased from 72.7% to 84% during the same time period (Boeri et al, 2020), and rose to 85% by 2019 (Giupponi and Xu, 2020). The education sector is foregrounded as this is over-represented amongst occupations held by entrepreneurial homeworkers (Kim and Parker, 2020), and the specific focus is placed on supplementary education. This industry offers extra tuition to school pupils in academic subjects outside of school, in the hope of increasing their academic attainment (Kim and Jung, 2019).…”

“…Solo self-employment has the dual distinction of being by far the most common, but also the most under-researched, form of self-employment in all EU nations (Bögenhold, 2019). The UK, for instance, had nearly 4 million solo self-employed workers by the end of 2019 (Giupponi and Xu, 2020), all of whom take on the entrepreneurial function of risk bearing (Kim and Parker, 2020), but not all of whom will be interested in business growth (Light and Munk, 2018;Storey and Greene, 2010). This solo self-employment matters not only because it dominates in numerical terms, but also as it is growing in most advanced economies (Boeri et al, 2020) against a backdrop of labour market change characterised (to varying degrees in different nations) by increased job insecurity, work intensification and in-work poverty (Innes, 2020;McGovern, 2020).…”

Home Office and Its Influence on Employee Motivation

“…At present, it is possible to talk about work in the form of a home office as a functioning way of performing work with growing tendencies. However, it is appropriate to consider trends in the home office in connection with the setting up of the employment system that prevailed in the most developed countries before its inception so that it is possible to understand why similar developments occur at all and how the "traditional" employment model affected the current state and how it could have influenced the current development, claim Predeteanu-Dragne et al (2020) and Kim & Parker (2020). Rosulek (2015, s. 56) makes the following summary commentary on the issue, which enshrines the shift in the employment of people: "The dominant model of managing people's activities is gradually reaching a dead end.…”

“…These employees also face many risks, which represent possible overload, social isolation, loss of belonging or higher demands on work organization. It is also important to mention that when working from home, it is more difficult to draw the line between work and leisure (Kim & Parker, 2020).…”