Roads Leading to Self–Employment

Dear Colleagues,

This special issue takes up a topic which is concerned with entry processes into self-employment analysed from various disciplinary perspectives. Historical, sociological, economic, psychological, geographical and other lenses may be employed. As diverse as the faces of self-employment are with respect to the sizes of economic firms and which are their sectors and concrete activities (Marshall & Gigliotti 2018), either firms run by an individual or by a team with or without further employees (Bögenhold 2019 a), or varying philosophies on pursuing business, as well as in combination with various other goals and preferences in life (Conen & Schippers 2019), ambitions or failing ambitions relating to growth, and historical and geographical variations (Gindling & Newhouse 2014).on those factors, that is how diverse the roads leading to self-employment are (Cieslik and Dvoulety,2019).

Different topic boxes (gender, family, social networks, migration, ethnicity, higher education, technology, agriculture and so on) create specific contexts (Hytti 2010) which address and reflect the different social roads to self-employment (Baker and Welter 2018). This special issue calls for a discussion of biographical and occupational transitions to self-employment in relation to the concrete steps undertaken and their inherent social rationalities and philosophies (Dawson & Henley 2012) nas well as degrees and forms of intentions to set up a company or to work as freelancer (Burke 2015). It addresses the characteristics of roads to self-employment in different socioeconomic fields, starting with the integration of new digital markets and technologies to more traditional sectors like agriculture or fishery (Bögenhold 2019 b).

One particular interest is the discussion of specific and varied roads in relation to the divergent contexts of individual careers leading to self-employment (Baruch, Vardi 2016) and their connectedness to different entrepreneurial opportunities (Davidsson 2015). In other words, we are asking for specific discussion of the “how, why, when and where” set of questions (Shane and Venkataraman 2000) in relation to roads leading to self-employment as well as in relation to the evolution of new occupational settings and their definitions and new organization (Aldrich 2009). Finally, questions concerning how the actors are socially embedded and linked to partners and/or family contexts, their health relations and aspects of well-being are of interest as is a focus on social variables defining the actors (religion, migration careers, education patterns and so on).

In short, the special issue tries to collect papers around the broad topics

• Roads to self-employment depending upon different specific contextual factors and backgrounds
• Social sequences of processes towards self-employment
• Occupational steps towards self-employment combined with different settings in other forms of employment (hybrids)
• Roads to self-employment and social networks of support
• Roads to self-employment and the management of finance
• Roads to self-employment and living relations of family members and living partners
• Roads to self-employment and impact on well-being and health conditions
• Specifications of the discussion above with specification upon migration, gender or regions
• Start-up processes in social-science view, conceptual questions and answers

Papers will be reviewed immediately after they are submitted but must be submitted at the latest by June 30, 2020.

Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted). A selection of the best papers will be published in a separate book edition shortly after publication in Administrative Sciences.

Aldrich, H. (2009). Lost in space, out of time: Why and how we should study organizations comparatively. In: King, B., Felin, T. and Whetten, D. (Eds.) Studying Differences between Organizations: Comparative Approaches to Organizational Research (Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Vol. 26), Emerald Group, 21-44.

Baker, T., Welter, F. (2018). Contextual Entrepreneurship. An Interdisciplinary Perspective. Foundations and Trends in Entrepreneurship, 14(4), 3-55.

Baruch, Y., & Vardi, Y. (2016). A fresh look at the dark side of contemporary careers: Toward a realistic discourse. British Journal of Management, 27(2), 355–372.

Bögenhold, D. (2019 a). Changing Ideas and Contours of Entrepreneurship in the History of Thought: On the Fluidity and Indefiniteness of a Term in: International Review of Entrepreneurship, 17 (2).145-168.

Bögenhold, D. (2019 b). From Hybrid Entrepreneurs to Entrepreneurial Billionaires: Observations on the Socioeconomic Heterogeneity of Self-employment, in: American Behavioral Scientist, 63(2):129-146.

Burke, A. (Ed.) (2015). The Handbook of Research on Freelancing and Self-Employment, Dublin: Senate Hall Academic Publishing.

Cieslik, J. and Dvoulety, O. (2019), Segmentation of the population of the solo self-employed, International Review of Entrepreneurship 17(3).

Conen, W., Schippers, J. (eds.)(2019) Self-Employment as Precarious Work. A European Perspective, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.

Davidsson, P. (2015). Entrepreneurial Opportunities and the Entrepreneurship Nexus: A Reconceptualization. Journal of Business Venturing, 30(5), 674-695.

Dawson, C., & Henley, A. (2012). “Push” versus “pull” entrepreneurship: An ambiguous distinction? International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research, 18(6), 697–719.

Gindling, T. H., & Newhouse, D. (2014). Self-employment in the developing world. World Development, 56, 313–331

Hytti, U. (2010). Contextualizing entrepreneurship in the boundaryless career. Gender in Management: An International Journal, 25(1), 64–81.

Marshall, D. R., & Gigliotti, R. (2018). Bound for entrepreneurship? A career-theoretical perspective on entrepreneurial intentions. International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal, 1–17. doi:10.1007/s11365-018-0523-6

Shane, S., Venkataraman, V. (2000). The Promise of Entrepreneurship as a Field of Research. Academy of Management Review, 25(1), 217-226.

Inquiries may be directed to [email protected] and [email protected]

Prof. Dieter Bögenhold
Prof. Robert D. Hisrich
Guest Editor

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• Self-employment
• start-ups
• social mobility and stratification
• careers
• labour markets
• biographies
• occupations
• sme's