Business Commons^™

Platforms As Entrepreneurial Incubators? How Online Labor Markets Shape Work Identity, Francesca Bellesia, Elisa Mattarelli, Fabiola Bertolotti, Maurizio Sobrero

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore how the process of work identity construction unfolds for gig workers experiencing unstable working relationships in online labor markets. In particular, it investigates how digital platforms, intended both as providers of technological features and online environments, affect this process.

Design/methodology/approach
The authors conducted an exploratory field study and collected data from 46 interviews with freelancers working on one of the most popular online labor markets and from online documents such as public profiles, job applications and archival data.

Findings
The findings reveal that the online environment constrains the action of workers …

Social Ties, Prior Experience, And Venture Creation By Transnational Entrepreneurs, Sarika Pruthi, Mike Wright

Faculty Publications

The interaction between resources, and host and home country contexts of transnational entrepreneurs (TEs), is important for understanding their strategies and hence performance of their ventures. Yet, how they deploy their unique experiences and social networks in the founding of ventures in multiple institutional contexts is less understood. Based on 15 in-depth interviews with TEs of Indian origin in the UK, and nine of their counterpart heads of transnational venture (TNV) operations, we explore the use of prior experience, and personal and industry ties in the founding of TNVs in their home country. Our findings show that the way TEs …

How Do Principles Textbooks Treat The Return To Entrepreneurship? The Missing Factor, John Estill, Tom Means

Faculty Publications

Principles textbooks have improved in incorporating entrepreneurship intheory. However, they still generally lack simple demonstrations of theentrepreneurial input, particularly when teaching the theory of a normal rateof return. Many texts are unclear over the definition of a normal return andits constituent parts. Our paper (1) reviews the theory of the entrepreneurialinput; (2) sorts how popular textbooks calculate a normal rate of returnconsistent with their definition of the entrepreneurial input; and (3)provides a simple numerical example that incorporates the entrepreneurialinput, which can be more fully developed in intermediate texts.