One-person enterprises and the phenomenon of hybrid self-employment: evidence from an empirical study

Abstract

The complex interaction of technological development and socio-demographic change has accelerated a structural change in the economy, resulting in a changing working environment and new forms of employment. In the field of selfemployment, an emerging trend towards one-person enterprises can be observed, which already represent more than 50 % of all Austrian companies. Based on a representative sample of 626 one-person enterprises in Carinthia, one of the federal countries in Austria, we found out that these micro enterprises are mainly driven by motives like self-realization or working without hierarchies. However, their emergence is also partly due to a lack of opportunities in the (dependent) labour market. Additionally, we found evidence for the phenomenon of hybrid self-employment, meaning that a significant part of the one-person enterprises (nearly 20 %) is additionally engaged in dependent work. The primary aim of this paper was to identify factors influencing these hybrid forms of employment status between dependent work and self-employment. Based on a binary Logit model, we found evidence that the hybrid employment status is mainly determined by age, the educational level, the situation in which the one-person enterprise was founded, the duration of the enterprise as well as the motives for being self-employed.

Solo Self-Employment, Human Capital and Hybrid Labour in the Gig Economy

“…8-10]). Using a logistic regression model, we additionally investigated several factors that determine the probability of the occurrence of hybrid entrepreneurship [Bögenhold, Klinglmair, 2016b]. Beside age, the situation in which the one-person enterprise was founded, the duration of the enterprise, as well as the motives for being self-employed, two important determinants were identified.…”

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“…The response rate of 7.0% resulted in a sample size of 626 one-person-enterprises, which is representative with respect to the legal form (over 90% of the sample comprised individual entrepreneurs), age (mean age in the sample and in the total population: 47 years), and gender, with males being slightly overrepresented in the sample compared with the total population. Several findings of the study are published in more detail elsewhere [Bögenhold, Klinglmair, 2014, 2015a, 2015b, 2016a, 2016b, 2016cKlinglmair, Bögenhold, 2014]. The complex interaction between technological development, globalization and socio-demographic change has accelerated the structural change of the economy resulting in a changing working environment and new forms of employment.…”

“…Concerning the field of self-employment, in many countries an emerging trend can be observed towards one-person enterprises, which, for example, already represent more than 50% of all Austrian companies as described above. One clearly has to keep in mind that these microenterprises are by far not homogeneous in a variety of aspects like motives for self-employment [Bögenhold, Klinglmair, 2015a, 2015b or by gender on the one hand, and by the extent of additional economic activities [Bögenhold, Klinglmair, 2016a, 2016b, 2016c on the other. For instance, we found evidence that one-person entrepreneurs are mainly driven by motives such as self-realization or working without hierarchies [Bögenhold, Klinglmair, 2015a].…”

“…These boundaries are fluid and dynamic in their nature and do not fit with the idea of a clean division that separates the sphere of dependent work neatly from that of independent work. These overlapping phenomena, when people combine both categories and dependent workers as well as independent actors, have overlapping identities [Bögenhold, Klinglmair, 2016a, 2016b, 2016c and are very often neglected in the research and are addressed in this paper.…”

Formation and development trends of self-employment in the Republic of Kazakhstan: applied research

“…Dissatisfaction with the demand for jobs offered in the labor market led to an increase in selfemployment among the population. The aim of the study is to identify criteria that allow defining self-employment among other types of employment, determining the status of selfemployment in the national economy, disclosing forms of self-employment, and considering the factors and characteristics of the formation of self-employment in the modern economy of the Republic of Kazakhstan [8].…”