Well-being effects of self-employment: A spatial inquiry

Our paper presents an empirical analysis of entrepreneurial well-being using a large-scale longitudinal household survey from the UK that tracks almost 50,000 individuals across seven waves over the period 2009–2017, as well as a number of exploratory case studies. We contribute to the existing literature by investigating how entrepreneurial well-being varies across locations along the urban-rural continuum, and across wealthy-deprived neighbourhoods. We use a Coarsened Exact Matching (CEM) approach to compare the well-being outcomes of individuals who switch into self-employment from waged employment, and show that entrepreneurial well-being, in the form of job satisfaction, is significantly higher for those living in semi-urban locations, relative to those living in urban and rural locations. We argue that semi-urban locations provide an optimal combination of ease of doing business and quality of life. Our results also show that individuals in wealthy neighbourhoods who switch into self-employment experience higher job satisfaction than otherwise comparable individuals living in materially deprived neighbourhoods, although the latter experience greater levels of life satisfaction following the switch.     

That Which Doesn’t Break Us: Identity Work by Local Indigenous ‘Stakeholders’

This article describes a case study on the Machiguenga, a remote Indigenous tribe affected by the Camisea Gas Project in the Peru. We introduce the anthropological concept of ‘glocalization’ and integrate this with organizational knowledge of ‘identity work’. Our findings demonstrate that identity work is a multi-faceted and boundary spanning process that significantly affects stakeholder relations and contributes to conflict between local communities and oil and gas companies. Indigenous identity can be both threatened and strengthened in response to natural gas development and is related to how individuals, communities and the Machiguenga (as a collective) engage in identity work. We also discuss broader implications for management ethics, including a discussion of how Indigenous self-identify processes create a challenge for stakeholder theory.     

Comparing employment interviews in Latin America with other countries

This study compares job interviews (n = 11,667) in Mexico with those in the following countries: Belgium, Russia, Taiwan, and the U.S. The findings support our hypotheses, which are based on a meta-cultural framework. The results reveal that in Mexico and Taiwan women are less likely to conduct interviews. In addition, interviewers asked different questions. Outside the U.S., interviewers asked applicants about their family, marital status, and children. In Russia and Taiwan, they asked about applicants' reasons for quitting their last job. In Belgium, Russia, and Taiwan, they asked about applicants' wage and salary expectations. In Belgium and Russia, they less often asked about applicants' values, opinions, and beliefs. This study suggests that in some countries employment interviews are more than a test of job-related knowledge, skills, and abilities. This report provides a taxonomy that is useful for comparing interview questions in Latin American and other countries as well as directions for future research.     

Developers and farmers intertwining interventions: the case of rainwater harvesting and food-for-work in Degua Temben,Tigray, Ethiopia

Understanding the objectives, strategies and actions of the different actors that play a role in the implementation of rural development programmes is a key to explaining the latter's success and sustainability. Based on in-depth anthropological fieldwork and from an actor perspective this paper shows how the Rainwater Harvesting Pond Programme (RHPP) and the public work component of the Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP) work out in practice in one district of the Tigray region in Ethiopia. Developers and farmers turn the two essentially unrelated rural development programmes into practically intertwined interventions, which leads to an undesirable set of outcomes. The RHPP's participants, who are conceived of as willing to improve, are favoured above other candidates for employment in the PSNP, which farmers compete for. Developers' and farmers' moves and countermoves result in targeting errors in the PSNP and in farmers massively constructing rainwater harvesting ponds, the large majority of which fail because farmers do not aspire to make them succeed, but merely see them as a stepping stone to employment in the PSNP. In addition both groups' perception of each other is affected. Our observations challenge prevailing interpretations of the effects of development interventions on Tigrayan people's livelihoods.