CN=Yes Ackn=Yes Mothers' business, work/life and the politics of 'mumpreneurship' Carol Ekinsmyth* Heralded by some as 'the new feminism', the new, internationally widespread phenomenon of 'the mumpreneur' represents a hotly contested and contestable subject identity. This article explores the debate, arguing that its themes drive to the heart of current issues regarding changing working practices, locations and gender-identities in affluent societies. The analyses of women entrepreneurs' views presented here (n=330), reveals that practitioners are sharply polarized on 'the mumpreneur'. This article explores these views and progresses research agendas by asking whether such ICTenabled transformations in working practices (embodied in the figure of the 'mumpreneur') have the potential to deliver greater choice for mothers' labour, or whether, conversely, they re-enable iniquitous gender role expectations and arrangements within families.
Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to develop gendered entrepreneurship theory through a focus on the roles of space and place in the daily lives and businesses of mothers who have configured business around the daily routines of family work. Design/methodology/approach -Through a consideration of the accounts of 29 "mumpreneurs" and using a framework forwarded by Jarvis to understand the geographically embedded "infrastructure of everyday life", this paper seeks to understand mumpreneurial decision making, choice and constraint. Findings -Spatial factors, in their myriad forms, run through and affect mothers' different levels of capability and constraint, and thus the (gender-role and entrepreneurial) "choices" that individuals and families make. Placing families in the realities of specific, material locales helps to embed our understandings of these decision-making processes in real places. Originality/value -This discussion: advances new understanding about how space and place enable or constrain mumpreneurship (in particular) and entrepreneurship (more generally); and provides a lens through which to examine the structure/agency dualism in relation to gendered entrepreneurship.
This paper focuses on the relationship between project forms of organization and new forms of employment, risk and exploitation in magazine publishing, and the ways in which these are embedded in place and social networks. It considers the organizational practices of the industry arguing that they represent a form of 'neo-industrial organizing', where, at the blurred boundaries of the 'firm', production is organized as 'project'. Evidence from interviews with 41 magazine industry workers reveals that key amongst the foundational mechanisms of this project form of organization are constructions of project workers as simultaneously highly responsible and insecure. This is brought about through the interplay of asymmetric power relations in highly socialized networks, geographical clustering and the transfer of risk from capital to labour at the margins of the firm. Cet article focalise sur le rapport entre l'organisation de projet et les nouvelles formes d'emplois, de risque et d'exploitation dans l'édition de revues, et la façon dont elles se voient ancrer dans des réseaux géographiques et sociaux. On considère les pratiques organisationnelles de l'industrie, tout en soutenant qu'elles représentent une forme d'organisation 'néo-industrielle', où la production est organisé sous forme d'un projet aux limites indistinctes de 'l'entreprise'. Il ressort des preuves provenant des interviews auprès de 41 salariés des maisons d'édition de revues que le mécanisme de base clé de cette forme d'organisation de projet c'est l'interprétation des salariés de projet comme à la fois responsables et instables. Cela s'explique par l'interaction du degré d'influence asymétrique au sein des réseaux hautement socialisés, le regroupement géographique et le transfert du risque àpartir du capital à l'emploi en marge de l'entreprise. Dieser Aufsatz untersucht die Beziehungen zwischen Projektorganisation und neuen Formen der Erwerbstätigkeit, Risiken und Ausbeutung, sowie der Art und Weisen, wie diese in lokale und gesellschaftliche Netzwerke eingebettet sind. Er betrachtet die organisatorischen Praktiken in der untersuchten Branche als eine Form 'neo-industrieller Organisation' in der Produktion in 'Projekten' die Unternehmensgrenzen zunehmend verwischt. Interviews mit 41 Beschäftigten der Zeitschriftenindustrie zeigen, dass--als konstitutives Moment dieser projektförmigen Organisation--die Projektmitarbeiter als hoch verantwortlich und zugleich höchst unsicher betrachtet werden. Dies resultiert aus dem Zusammenspiel von asymmetrischen Machtverhältnissen in stark vergesellschafteten Netzwerken, räumlicher Konzentration und der Verlagerung von Risiko von Kapital zu Arbeit an den Grenzlinien der Unternehmen.Project Organization, Embeddedness, Flexibility, Risk, Magazine Industry, Cultural Industries,
This paper contributes to the debate on the utility of Ulrich Beck's (1992) notion of the ‘risk society’ for understanding the positions and experiences of workers who are negotiating more ‘flexible’ employment contracts. Whilst previous articles in this journal have concentrated upon the lower end of the employment market, I aim to broaden the scope of the discussion by focussing upon professional freelance magazine workers, and ask whether Beck's framework has a different utility in terms of understanding their employment security and risk.1
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