Hybridity of Freelancers and Selfemployment

What is it about?

The paper deals with self-employment of one-(wo)man-firms as the smallest units of entrepreneurial companies and focusses at the blurred boundaries between (wage or salary) dependent work and self-employment. We have been trained to think in binary terms of reciprocal exclusion, where people belong to one or another category within the system of employment. Generally, one distinguishes between dependent work including blue- and whitecollar workers on the one and independent (self-employed) workers on the other hand. What is very often neglected is that overlapping phenomena can be observed when people combine both categories. In these cases, dependent workers and independent actors have overlapping identities. We call those identities hybrid entrepreneurs. Empirical findings are related to an representative online sample. Conclusions show that the majority of the hybrid one-person enterprises operate only as a sideline business. This category of micro enterprises holds a classical dependent employment (main activity) and additionally works on a self-employed basis. In contrast, the share of one-person enterprises whose self-employment represents the main activity (main business) amounts to merely a bit more than 15 %. Finally, nearly one third of the analyzed one-person enterprises are mixed forms, hence, “true” hybrids lying between the category of main and sideline business.

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Why is it important?

Structute of occupations is never divided into black and white.

Perspectives