The Challenges of Self-Employment in Europe

Semenza, Renata; Pichault, François

doi:10.4337/9781788118453

Cited by 18 publications

(17 citation statements)

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“…Heterogeneity can first be related to alternative work arrangements. The internal composition of the "self-employed" category is hard to identify (Leighton and McKeown, 2015), because of its wide heterogeneity (Semanza & Pichault, 2019). New forms of contingent work and independence such as freelancing and self-employment offer new job opportunities to more diverse categories of people, some of whom were previously excluded from the job market.…”

Section: Client Professionalization For Heterogeneous Professionalsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Following calls for more extensive research on corporate forms of professionalism (Muzio & Kirkpatrick, 2011;Bellini & Maestripieri, 2018;Reed, 2018), this paper contributes to a more comprehensive and nuanced understanding of the "corporate professions" (Ackroyd, 2016), by focusing on those practiced by self-employed, solo practitioners and freelancers, which have been overlooked in the literature. It seems relevant to explore this kind of profession, since the numbers of "independent professionals"-knowledge workers who work as independent contractors-have exploded in recent years in Europe (Rapelli, 2012;Bologna, 2018;Semanza & Pichault, 2019). This diversity among "corporate professions" in terms of work contract has implications for the conceptions of professionalism involved.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Client Professionalization, a Resource for Heterogeneous Professionals: For a Pluralistic Account of Corporate Professions

Salman¹

2021

P&P

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Drawing on the corporate professionalization model, the notion of client professionalization denotes new, client-oriented strategies of legitimization and claims relating to expertise, differentiation, regulation and dissemination. Based on the case of executive coaching in France and its professionalization process, the paper shows how these strategies enable heterogeneous categories of actors to become recognized as professionals. These strategies act as resources because they are grounded on principles other than exclusion and monopoly, such as extension and co-production, which give new value to heterogeneous socialization experiences and multiple activities. The emphasis on client-relationship skills affords atypical professionals’ access to rewarding positions that would otherwise have been unattainable for them. These strategies are important for occupations such as coaching that are practiced by self-employed individuals, who have been overlooked in the literature. They also tend to constitute an appealing access to professionalization, in a context where the power of the market is increasing.

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Section: Client Professionalization For Heterogeneous Professionalsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Client Professionalization, a Resource for Heterogeneous Professionals: For a Pluralistic Account of Corporate Professions

Salman¹

2021

P&P

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“…IPros are thus a distinct subset within freelancing and contracting: They are professionals who operate as independent contractors. They account for approximately 10% of the Australian workforce (ABS, 2018), 16% of the workforce in the United States (Pofeldt, 2019), an estimated 15% in the United Kingdom (ONS, 2019) and 6.5% of workers in the European Union (OECD, 2019b; Semenza & Pichault, 2019). While empirical studies exploring the individual experience of contractors are few in number, those devoted to IPros are even rarer.…”

Section: Contracting and The Changing World Of Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We set out to answer this question through an exploratory qualitative study focused on the workforce of independent professionals (IPros). Accounting for between 6 and 16% of the workforce of most developed nations (ABS, 2018; ONS, 2019; Pofeldt, 2019; Semenza & Pichault, 2019), it is a workforce made of skilled contractors such as interpreters, consultants, interim managers, and IT specialists through to all kinds of creative workers belonging to unregulated professions (Leighton & McKeown, 2015). While such individuals represent a significant segment of the global labor market, they are often purposefully excluded from the remit of the TM function (Bamber, Bartram, & Stanton, 2017; McKeown & Cochrane, 2017; Wilkinson, Bacon, Snell, & Lepak, 2019).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Independent professionals as talent: Evidence from individual views of working as a contractor

McKeown

Pichault

2020

Human Resource Management

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In this article we challenge the assumption that independent professionals (IPros), that is professionals who work as contractors, freelancers, and self‐employed individuals, are not within the remit of talent management (TM) theory and practice. The TM literature is almost exclusively focused on traditional employees and largely ignores the external workforce, even if like IPros, they epitomize high‐value talent. Moreover, much of the TM literature takes an organizational perspective while the individual perspective remains marginal. Advancing the notion of institutional factors in the macro environment suggested by King and Vaiman, we draw on interviews with 52 IPros in two contrasted institutional contexts to provide an agentic view of TM from outside of the standard employment relationship. Our findings reveal the importance of volition, emotional stability, internal locus of control, and self‐efficacy play in IPros effectively managing personal TM strategies. These strategies allow IPros to overcome the empowerment/powerlessness tensions Daubner‐Siva et al. call the “talent paradox.” Importantly, the results do not vary between the two national contexts, suggesting that embracing a “total TM” strategy, attentive to the personal characteristics of talent, regardless of the regulatory issues linked to employment status, will produce superior outcomes for all.

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“…Following calls for more extensive research on corporate forms of professionalism Reed, 2018), this paper contributes to a more comprehensive and nuanced understanding of the "corporate professions" (Ackroyd, 2016), by focusing on those practiced by self-employed, solo practitioners and freelancers, which have been overlooked in the literature. It seems relevant to explore this kind of profession, since the numbers of "independent professionals"-knowledge workers who work as independent contractors-have exploded in recent years in Europe (Rapelli, 2012;Bologna, 2018;Semanza & Pichault, 2019).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Special Issue: Heterogeneity Among Professions and Professionals

Leseth¹

2021

P&P

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This paper critically discusses the relationship between new workspaces, such as Coworking Spaces (CSs), professionals using such spaces, and the related work patterns, looking at the Italian context in particular. There appears to be a mismatch between the educational level of such workers, their expertise and expected professional status on the one hand, and their reality in terms of employment precariousness and low income, on the other. It appears that CSs and, more in general, new shared workspaces act more as shelters from a difficult and exclusionary job market than as mainly "serendipity accelerators." The hypothesis of this article is that, through a careful interpretation of the emerging dimensions and spatial effects of CSs, it is possible to more clearly identify some dynamics of inclusion and exclusion on the one hand, and of sharing and competition on the other, that characterize the job path of new knowledge-based occupational groups.

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The Challenges of Self-Employment in Europe

Cited by 18 publications

References 0 publications

Client Professionalization, a Resource for Heterogeneous Professionals: For a Pluralistic Account of Corporate Professions

Client Professionalization, a Resource for Heterogeneous Professionals: For a Pluralistic Account of Corporate Professions

Independent professionals as talent: Evidence from individual views of working as a contractor

Special Issue: Heterogeneity Among Professions and Professionals

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