Reconceptualizing Informal Work Practices: Some Observations from an Ethnic Minority Community in Urban UK

Whilst paid informal work has been conceptualized as a form of paid employment imbued with solely economic motivations, this article critically argues that such a market‐­oriented reading fails to take into account alternative explanations for the existence of informal work practices. Using evidence from 50 interviews conducted within a Pakistani urban community in a northern UK city, this article, uses a mixed‐embeddedness perspective to highlight the importance of predominantly socially and culturally driven motives in the decision to engage in informal work. The findings highlight that participation in informal work, whilst a product of marginalization due to certain institutional and structural factors, is also driven by a range of non‐monetary motives—a result of certain socially embedded work relations between ethnic minority workers and their employers. It is this social embeddedness of the employer–employee relationship in the Pakistani ethnic minority community that explains the continuation of informal work practices in the face of prevailing laws and regulations. The findings add weight to the understanding of informal work as being about more than just economics and constraints, offering these ethnic minority workers opportunities, even status, and giving them agency in an otherwise disempowered situation.     

Entrepreneurship and embeddedness: dynamic,processual and multi-layered perspectives

ABSTRACT

Contemporary research has demonstrated that entrepreneurship is a fundamentally contextualized phenomenon and unfolds differently in different contexts. Despite the extensive coverage of the importance of embeddedness for entrepreneurial activities, the research predominantly relies on somewhat static, single layered, and binary notions of embeddedness. We argue that there is a strong need for studies that problematize embeddedness and the relationship between entrepreneur and context. This call for papers, thus invites contributions that explore embeddedness as dynamic, processual and multi-layered, as well as elaborate on the paradoxes of embeddedness?     

Family embeddedness and entrepreneurship experience: a study of Indian migrant women entrepreneurs in Australia

India has emerged as a major source of migrants for developed countries including Australia; yet, there is a dearth of research on Indian migrant entrepreneurs, particularly women. Using qualitative methods of enquiry, we explore the perceptions of Indian migrant women entrepreneurs (MWEs) and their partners in Melbourne, Australia, about their entrepreneurship experiences from a family embeddedness perspective. More specifically, we explore how family embeddedness of Indian MWEs is influenced by certain factors which in turn influence their entrepreneurship experience. Our findings suggest that entrepreneurship among Indian MWEs is a complex phenomenon influenced by their being an Indian, a woman and a new Australian, all of which interact and influence their family dynamics and entrepreneurial experience. Our findings shed light on the duality of Indian culture which exerts both an enabling and a constraining influence on the family dynamics of MWEs, the constraining role of gender and the positive impact of their integration into the host country’s sociocultural context which all influence their family embeddedness and entrepreneurship. Contributing to the discussion on ‘ethnic’ and ‘women entrepreneurship’ from a family embeddedness perspective, we offer policy implications for facilitating entrepreneurship in the growing but under-researched cohort of Indian MWEs.     

Historicizing the ‘ethnic’ in ethnic entrepreneurship: The case of the ethnic Chinese in Bangkok

This paper aims to come to a better understanding of the meaning of ‘ethnic’ in ethnic entrepreneurship for second- and third-generation ethnic Chinese entrepreneurs in Bangkok, Thailand. Research on ethnic Chinese entrepreneurship in Southeast Asia typically investigates the dominance, attributed to specific ‘Chinese’ cultural values and strong intra-ethnic networks, of the ethnic Chinese in business and entrepreneurship. Our research among second- and third-generations shows an inclination of the interviewees to emphasize the irrelevance of their ‘ethnic’ Chinese background in entrepreneurship. To understand the meanings of the expressed irrelevance, we argue that it is constructive to incorporate a historical/generational approach of the ethnic group (migration history, nationalism) and of the business (social organization) into the study of ethnic entrepreneurship. The contribution to ethnic entrepreneurship research is threefold. Firstly, we show how a generational lens provides a more nuanced understanding of the ‘ethnic’ in ethnic entrepreneurship. Secondly, we show how incorporating the historical context helps to position business conduct in the social/societal experiences of entrepreneurs. Finally, our case study of ethnic Chinese entrepreneurs in Thailand brings an Asian perspective to ethnic entrepreneurship debates that generally concern European and North American research studies and thus hopes to inspire future comparative research.     

The best of both worlds: how rural entrepreneurs use placial embeddedness and strategic networks to create opportunities

Entrepreneurial activities are strongly influenced by the context in which they occur. It is therefore imperative to understand how different contexts enable entrepreneurs to create opportunities. In this paper, we focus on the spatial context of rural entrepreneurs and explore how the rural context impacts on their opportunity creation. Based on a multiple case study, we find that rural entrepreneurs mix what we refer to as placial embeddedness – an intimate knowledge of and concern for the place – with strategically built non-local networks, i.e. the best of two worlds. Notably, the entrepreneurs seek to exhaust the localized resource base before seeking out non-local resources. Our findings thus contribute to our understanding of entrepreneurship in context and challenge future research to explore how different forms of contexts are bridged in different settings to create varieties of entrepreneurial activities.     

Do not say a word! Conceptualizing employee silence in a long-term crisis context

Abstract

Although research has emphasized the organizational and individual factors that influence employee voice and silence at work, it is less known how employee voice/silence is affected by the economic context, particularly when this context is one of intensive and long-term economic crisis in a country with weak institutional bases. In this study, we explore how employee silence is formulated in long-term turbulent economic environments and in more vulnerable organizational settings like those of small enterprises. The study draws on qualitative data gathered from 63 interviews with employees in a total of 48 small enterprises in Greece in two periods of time (2009 and 2015). This study suggests a new type of employee silence, social empathy silence, and offers a conceptual framework for understanding the development of silence over time in particular contexts of long-term turbulence and crisis.     

Embeddedness in context: understanding gender in a female entrepreneurship network

ABSTRACT

In this paper I argue that through a process of embeddedness in context, a female entrepreneurship network is able to challenge gender structures. I investigate how a female entrepreneurship network is constructed and how they reinforce and possibly challenge existing gender structures. From an ethnographic study, three processes in the female entrepreneurship network were identified: making proper entrepreneurs, building relationships and engaging in change. In the different processes the women involved in the network reinforced gender structures through compliance with a masculine discourse of entrepreneurship, but also challenged gender structures through questioning this discourse. Through becoming embedded in their local community, the women entrepreneurs were able to take charge of the development of the network and challenge gender structures as a result of questioning the masculine discourse of entrepreneurship. This implies an interplay between embeddedness and gender as two separate but dependent processes. Linking together gender and embeddedness elicits a new take on the way female entrepreneurship networks are constructed and how they could advance gender equality within entrepreneurship. Consequently, this paper emphasises a need for further examination of embeddedness within gender and entrepreneurship research.     

From admiration to abhorrence: the contentious appeal of entrepreneurship across Europe

Although entrepreneurship seems to offer a universal economic solution, there are some doubts about whether it is universally attractive. We argue that entrepreneurship is a socially constructed concept and consequently the meanings, and hence the appeal, of the enterprise will vary internationally. We argue that how entrepreneurship is understood affects how attractive it seems. Accordingly, we investigated the meanings of entrepreneurship by analysing a range of metaphors of entrepreneurship gathered from schools across Europe. We found that both the meaning and understandings of the practices vary considerably. For most, the concept of entrepreneurship as an engine of the economy is attractive, but for some, the practices of entrepreneurs were considerably less appealing. We find links between national socio-economic contexts and attractiveness. We argue that culture and context seem to influence the social constructions of entrepreneurship and hence the attractiveness of entrepreneurial options. We also find that the pedagogical national narratives of the entrepreneur stand in dynamic tension with the performative national processes of entrepreneurship.     

Guest editorial: Female and ethnic minority entrepreneurship

There has been an increasing level of interest in diversity in small business enterprises. This diversity has been largely focused on female and ethnic minority entrepreneurs. Although there is evidence that female entrepreneurship can have a positive impact on economic prosperity, levels of earnings remain low. The articles in this special issue further our understanding of female and minority entrepreneurs. They examine important topics such as the differences between male and female entrepreneurs in terms of confidence, growth expectations, entrepreneurial orientation and social capital, developing management skills in female entrepreneurs, their management competencies and refugee entrepreneurship.     

The institutional embeddedness of local inter-firm networks: a leverage for business creation

There is an increasing concern for the notion of ‘embeddedness’ of economic activity; yet the conceptualization of the concept and its operationalization remain underdeveloped. First, embeddedness may concern, on the one hand, the structure of relations that tie economic actors together (structural embeddedness) and, on the other hand, the social strands supplementing economic strands in each relation (substantive embeddedness). In this paper, a network framework is outlined which proposes several layers or ‘orders’ of embeddedness. Focusing on small firms, the point of departure is individual exchange relationships as personal ties combining economic and social concerns. First-order embeddedness concerns the localized business networks created by combining these dyadic relations. Second-order embeddedness is achieved when considering also the memberships of business persons in economic and social local institutions while third-order embeddedness concerns the special cases where these institutions bridge gaps between firms. The network model is operationalized and applied to a small Swedish industrial (furniture) community, its firms and economic/social institutions. The findings generally support the applicability of the model and demonstrate the supplementarity of different layers/orders of embeddedness. Further research challenges are deduced and implications for practitioners are provided.     

An alternative employee rights paradigm: Labor process theory

A dialectical relationship exists between the capitalist desire for accumulation of wealth and profits, and the rights of employees. Labor process theory exposes facets of the fundamental incongruity between the interests of employers and workers in a capitalist political economy. An analysis of employee rights through the labor process framework facilitates the potential for human emancipation by illuminating the ideological, political, and economic sources of domination and repression that are embedded in the capitalist system. In this article, three core elements of labor process theory—the social relations of production, the managerial control imperative, and the restructuring of work—are used to highlight ways in which organizations maintain their hegemonic position. This exposé offers the basis for an alternative paradigmatic view of the employment relationship and informs our thinking of how employee rights are impacted, and often tempered, in work organizations. Portions of this article were presented by both authors at the 12th Annual International Labour Process Conference March, 1994 in Birmingham, England.     

Culture,entrepreneurship and uneven development: a spatial analysis

Interest in the proposed connection between culture and entrepreneurship has grown significantly in recent years. However, less attention has been given to the nature of the overall impact of this proposed association on development outcomes, particularly at the local level. In response, this paper analyses the relationship between the nature of the culture, entrepreneurship and development experienced across localities, proposing that the link between culture and development is mediated by entrepreneurship. It focuses upon the concept of community culture, as well as embracing a notion of development incorporating both economic and social well-being outcomes. Drawing upon a multivariate spatial analysis of data from localities in Great Britain, the findings indicate that differences in rates of entrepreneurship are strongly influenced by the community culture present in these localities. Furthermore, a bidirectional relationship is found to exist between entrepreneurship and economic and social development outcomes. It is concluded that the embeddedness of local community culture presents a significant challenge for those places seeking to promote entrepreneurially driven development.     

兰州中小工业企业社会与地域根植研究

新经济社会学认为,经济活动根植于社会关系和结构中,经济过程也是社会过程,经济地理学家在区域经济发展研究中则把社会根植扩展为地域根植。我国有关中小企业地域根植的实践研究集中在产业集群和高技术开发区,而对大企业占优地区中小企业的根植很少论及。本文基于企业问卷调查和访谈,探讨了兰州中小工业企业的社会和地域根植。研究表明,由于地理背景不同,兰州中小企业网络的特征和功能较我国原发性传统产业集群有很大不同。作者认为,用根植理论分析区域发展时必须充分考虑区域情景,同时也要考虑更为宏观的要素如国家制度、区间网络和更大范围内的劳动分工等。     

Neo-pluralism as a theoretical framework for understanding HRM in sub-Saharan Africa

This paper discusses the 'social' nature of employment management problems in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). 'Applied' Western HRM is largely based on unitarist conceptions of organizational reality. Where conceptions suggest a 'stakeholder' perspective, they tend to follow orthodox formulations of pluralism. In that regard, notions of 'stakeholding' refer to the divergent internal organizational interests (mainly economic) of labour and management. In the SSA context, however, the broader social and moral issues of the wider community have a decisive influence on the employment relationship. And internal employment relations structures, such as trade unions, do not constitute the main representative channels for employee grievances. Consequently, established Western employment frames of reference do not represent suitable theoretical frameworks for analysing all the relevant social factors that influence the SSA employment relationship. This paper proposes a modified version of Ackers' (2002) 'neo-pluralist' theoretical framework as the basis for understanding and resolving some of issues involved in HRM in SSA. From this analysis, it proposes a model of HRM that attempts to institutionalize some elements of the 'African social system' into formal HRM policies and strategies.     

Towards A Synthesis of Transaction Cost Economics and a Feminist Oriented Network Analysis

A bstract This paper suggests the possibility of an interdisciplinary, tripartite merger of transaction cost economics and the concept of embeddedness, with feminist insights. It demonstrates that in isolation, a simple application of transaction cost analysis can offer an adequate explanation of economic activity. The explanatory power of this approach however, is enhanced when complemented by greater recognition of the importance of the social context in which economic activity occurs. This paper uses research from New Zealand's largest street market to examine women's work in street commerce, a sub-sector of the informal sector. Aspects of transaction cost analysis are applied to activities of women market vendors. It is proposed however, that the approach we take which considers the embeddedness of economic activity in ongoing networks of social relations, and the intertwining of economic with non-economic goals, is compatible with aspects of feminism. Novel features of the analysis include the application of transaction cost analysis to informal sector activity and a synthesis of this approach with a feminist oriented network analysis.     

Social embeddedness and job performance of tenured and non‐tenured professionals

This study examines how different employment relationships in academic settings, ie tenured versus non‐tenured appointments, are associated with different types of job performance efforts. The social embeddedness model contends that employees' efforts to perform well depend on embeddedness in the social environment. Adopting this perspective, we ask what types of embeddedness are likely to improve job performance efforts, namely compliance and contextual performance, under the condition of different employment relationships. Regression analyses on the responses of both tenured and non‐tenured faculty members show that employees' efforts to perform well can be explained by social embeddedness. Temporal embeddedness appears to be important in explaining the job performance efforts of tenured faculty members, while, in contrast, network embeddedness seems important in explaining the efforts of nontenured faculty members; and institutional embeddedness explained the efforts of both groups of faculty members.     

Risky Businesses? Young People in Informal Self‐Employment in Sofia

This article studies how perceptions of the risks associated with informal self‐employment depend on the interplay between the institutional, structural (network) and cultural embeddedness of economic action. Informal self‐employment should create at least three types of risk. The first concerns the possible legal and social sanctions that stem from the illegal character of the entrepreneurial action. The second is related to the complete lack of social security protection among those for whom informal self‐employment is their sole employment. The third is connected with the lack of guarantees concerning contract enforcement, which may increase the probability of opportunistic behaviour by business partners and clients. On the basis of a qualitative study of young, highly educated, informally self‐employed workers in Bulgaria's capital Sofia, I argue that these risks are compensated by the specific network and cultural embeddedness of the economic action. This compensation takes the form of various types of insurance against risks. Its core is the replacement of the vacuum of institutional‐system trust with interpersonal trust. Thus, the specific constellation of institutional, network and cultural embeddedness is able to solve the problem of opportunism, as well as to create the perception that the informally self‐employed are faced with not much greater risks than registered self‐employed workers.     

Self-employment of immigrants and natives in Sweden – a multilevel analysis

Recent research suggests that self-employment among immigrants is due to a combination of multiple situational, cultural and institutional factors, all acting together. Using multilevel regression and unique data on the entire population of Sweden for the year 2007, this study attempts to quantify the relative importance for the self-employed of embeddedness in ethnic contexts (country of birth) and regional business and public regulatory frameworks (labour market areas). This information indicates whether the layers under consideration are valid constructs of the surroundings that influence individual self-employment. The results show that 10% (women) and 8% (men) of the total variation in individual differences in self-employment can be attributed to the country of birth. When labour market areas are included in the analyses, the share of the total variation increases to 14% for women and 12% for men. The results show that the ethnic context and the economic environment play a minor role in understanding individual differences in self-employment levels. The results can have important implications when planning interventions or other actions focusing on self-employment as public measures to promote self-employment often are based on geographic areas and ethnic contexts.     

基于自我决定论的员工个人企业家行为影响因素实证研究

员工个人企业家行为是一个新兴的组织行为学变量,环境干预和个体特征对其的影响有待进一步研究。调查样本来自西安高新技术和文化服务产业企业中的基层员工。研究结果表明：情感性支持（AS）、物质支持（MS）、关系支持（RS）、工作发展支持（JDS）等四个维度均对员工个人企业家行为中的个人创新行为维度有显著的正向促进作用;除AS外,MS、RS、JDS等维度均对营造创新氛围这一维度有显著的正向促进作用;内部动机对员工企业家行为有显著的正向促进作用;内部工作动机在POS中的AS、RS、JDS这三个维度与员工企业家行为中的两个维度之间起到部分中介作用。该结论证实了自我决定机制在环境因素影响个体内部动机从而影响个体行为中的作用,揭示了组织支持感影响员工个人企业家行为的心理一行为路径。