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Entrepreneurial and Small Business Operations

Selected Works

2012

Social science

Articles 1 - 3 of 3

Full-Text Articles in Business

Evaluating The Variations In Undeclared Work In The Eu28, Colin C. Williams Dec 2011

Evaluating The Variations In Undeclared Work In The Eu28, Colin C. Williams

Colin C Williams

Drawing upon the results of 26,659 face-to-face interviews in the 27 member states of the
European Union (EU-27), the aim of this paper is to evaluate its varying magnitude and
whether such work is mostly wage-based (of an envelope wage or undeclared variety) or
own-account work (of a market-oriented or solidarity-oriented variety). The finding is
that in ‘welfare capitalist’ work and welfare regimes, which are more equal (measured by
the gini coefficient) pursue more extensive labour market interventions, have higher
levels of social protection and greater state redistribution, undeclared economies are
smaller and are composed mostly of solidarity-oriented own-account work. …


Blurring The Formal/Informal Economy Divide: Beyond A Dual Economies Approach, Colin C. Williams, Sara Nadin Dec 2011

Blurring The Formal/Informal Economy Divide: Beyond A Dual Economies Approach, Colin C. Williams, Sara Nadin

Colin C Williams

The need to integrate work beyond employment into discussions of labor practices is widely recognized. This has been so far largely achieved by adopting a dual economies perspective, which is criticized for depicting the formal and informal sectors as separate hostile worlds. To resolve this, an alternative “total social organization of labor” approach is here proposed that maintains the terms formal and informal as useful broad descriptors of different work relations, but recognizes a spectrum from purely formal to purely informal labor practices cross-cut by another spectrum from wholly monetized to wholly non-monetized labor practices. Reporting evidence from 861 face-to-face …


Entrepreneurship In The Informal Economy: Commercial Or Social Entrepreneurs?, Colin C. Williams, Sara Nadin Dec 2011

Entrepreneurship In The Informal Economy: Commercial Or Social Entrepreneurs?, Colin C. Williams, Sara Nadin

Colin C Williams

Recent research has revealed that a large proportion of entrepreneurs startup
their ventures operating on a wholly or partially off-the-books basis. Until now, it
has been commonly assumed that those who operate in the informal economy are
exclusively commercial entrepreneurs. They are assumed to be rational economic
actors who weigh up the benefits of operating off-the-books against the costs of
being caught and decide to operate in this manner. The aim of this paper is to
evaluate critically this a priori assumption. Reporting evidence from a 2005/6 survey
involving face-to-face interviews with 102 informal entrepreneurs in Moscow in
Russia, the …