Entrepreneurship and geography-some thoughts about a complex relationship

This review article sheds a light on the complex and hitherto under-researched relationship between geography and entrepreneurship. This relationship is considered to be interdependent. Both directions are discussed. The paper also describes the perspectives of both academic disciplines involved in regional entrepreneurship research, namely (geographically sensitive) economics and management studies on the one hand, and economic geography on the other. Based on a comprehensive overview of the theoretical and empirical literature on regional entrepreneurship, several research gaps are identified that could be helpful for designing future research. Some have strong relevance for government policy, which has recently paid much more attention to entrepreneurship than in the past (e.g. related to the entrepreneurial ecosystem approach), but which rather rarely has been considered in academic evaluations so far. This paper ends with a suggestion for an agenda for future regional entrepreneurship research. Digital transformation with its potential for a disruptive transformation of economies and societies will provide an excellent and, of course, a currently not well-understood research field for regional entrepreneurship research.

Paving the Way for Self-Employment: Does Society Matter?

This paper empirically investigates the extent to which institutional and individual factors predict the level of intention relating to self-employment. Arriving at a better understanding of intentions will assist to provide answers as to why ratios of self-employment are as they are and how public and economic policy may respond to an often perceived requirement to increase the level of self-employment. Using the dataset of 2017 Amway Global Entrepreneurship Research (AGER) for Austria, the United Kingdom, Italy, the United States, and Brazil this study finds that all variables predicting the intention to enter self-employment are significant at varying degree. The research explores the interplay between age, risk, gender, and education, on the one hand, and unemployment (OECD Labour Force Statistics) and political constitution as measured by the EFW index, on the other hand. Distinguishing between “no intention”, an “indifferent intention,” and a “strong intention” towards self-employment, the findings show that all variables can predict a willingness for self-employment in different, but significant, ways to comparable measures (an indifferent intention relative to no intention, and a strong intention to no intention). The paper concludes with an outlook to some more general perspectives of institutional economics and needs for further research.

Independent work, modern organizations and entrepreneurial labor: Diversity and hybridity of freelancers and self-employment

The paper deals with self-employment of one-(wo)man-firms as the smallest units of entrepreneurial companies and focuses at the blurred boundaries between dependent work and self-employment. We call the overlapping identities hybrid entrepreneurs. Based on the collected data it can be shown that the hybrid self-employed differ significantly from non-hybrid ‘regular’ entrepreneurs with respect to selected socio-demographic characteristics, professional, as well as company-specific factors. The paper takes up several of the findings and tries to discuss them in a framework of (micro) organizations, institutions and self-employment. Taking the case of hybrid employment fosters crucial and provoking questions for an appropriate understanding of the division of enterprises and occupations.