Susan Baines

Networking, entrepreneurship and microbusiness behaviour

It has been argued that networking by owner-managers of small businesses will enhance business performance. Yet to define and demonstrate the presence of networking activity is suffused with methodological difficulties. In this paper the authors attempt to disentangle some of these difficulties. The paper draws on quantifiable data from 104 owner-managers and qualitative data from 34 critical incident interviews from a study of microbusinesses to assess the nature and extent of networking activity. The paper shows: a high proportion of owner-managers use their trading contacts as sources of useful additional information; they use ‘weak ties’ for purposes such as recruitment; a sparse use of institutional networks; an association between networking activity and business performance, although it seems that this must be qualified by sectoral differences; an association between type of owner-manager on a scale of entrepreneurship and networking activity. The policy implications of this paper suggest that economic development agencies continue to have problems reaching out to the microbusiness. This paper recommends that such agencies might use a tool to differentiate more finely amongst the microbusiness population.

Does gender affect business 'performance'? A study of microbusinesses in business services in the UK

There is a dearth of studies that have examined the issue of the impact of gender on business performance. Three problems are evident in this earlier work:(1) the need to expose theoretical assumptions; (2) the adequacy of methodologies adopted; and (3) apparent equivocal results. A theme running through much of this work is whether the concept of ‘performance’ is itself gendered. This paper confines itself to addressing three research questions in respect of the impact of gender of business owner on business performance. The field data comprise a sample of 104 microbusinesses in business services in two locations-Newcastle upon Tyne and Milton Keynes, in the UK. The results show (1) no significant difference between the performance of the businesses of sole male and sole female owners, (2) clear evidence of the underperformance of spouse-owned businesses, (3) no support for the hypothesis that women have an ‘integrated approach’ to their business and personal lives (in contrast to men), and (4) evidence that cultural presuppositions about gender roles were most clearly demonstrated in the spouse-owned businesses.

Reinventing Traditional Solutions: Job Creation, Gender and the Micro-Business Household

There has been overwhelming interest in the numbers of jobs attributable to the formation and growth of new small firms but comparative silence about their working practices. We offer two novel, inter-linked approaches to thinking about work and employment in small firms. Firstly, we use a methodological approach which takes a household level analysis as a starting point, making gender a foundation stone. Secondly, we use an institutional perspective which focuses on power and power relations. From quantitative and qualitative empirical work with micro-businesses in business services we show that family work can be a vital resource. Yet there can also be severe costs, particularly for the many women who participate in business alongside their husbands as co-owners, employees and unpaid helpers. Gender divisions of labour are, typically, reproduced in traditional fashion. Even when business owners bring in employees from outside the family, relations within the micro-business are not fully market relations. Conflicts arise as business/owners and their employees struggle to manage these partially decommodified relations. The micro-business service sector actually represents a return to traditional ways of organising business by integrating business and household so that the traditional embedding of business and family of in-between pre-modern institutions is reinvented.

What is family friendly about the workplace in the home? The case of self-employed parents and their children

This article draws upon the narratives of self-employed parents, their partners and children in order to examine the ‘family friendliness’ of making the home a site of paid work. While not fitting narrow definitions of ‘teleworker’ the subjects daily confronted the use of space in their homes, and access to technologies there.

Work and employment in small businesses: perpetuating and challenging gender traditions

More and more women and men are becoming dependent on some form of small business activity for all or part of their livelihoods but there is little research offering insight into gender and working practices in small businesses. In this article we assess some theoretical approaches and discuss these against an empirical investigation of micro-firms run by women, men and mixed sex partnerships. In the ‘entrepreneurship’ literature, with its emphasis on the individual business owner, we find little guidance. We argue that in the ‘modern’ micro-business, family and work are brought into proximity as in the ‘in between’ organizational form described by Weber. The celebrated ‘flexibility’ of small firms often involves the reproduction within modernity of seemingly pre-modern practices in household organization and gender divisions of labour. This is true in the Britain of the 1990s in a growing business sector normally associated neither with tradition nor with the family. Tradition, however, is never automatic or uncontested in a ‘post-traditional society’. A minority of women and men in micro-enterprises actively resist traditional solutions and even traditional imagery of male and female behaviour. For this small group alone new economic conditions seem to bring new freedom.

New Technologies and Old Ways of Working in the Home of the Self-employed Teleworker

Home-based micro-enterprises involving information and communications technologies are associated with the new, entrepreneurial economy of the twenty-first century. The research reported in this paper suggests that if such ‘new’ ways of working become more widespread the results may not only be harsh for many individuals and households but damaging overall for the quality of working life.

Servicing the media: freelancing, teleworking and 'enterprising' careers

This article examines the working lives of people offering services to the media on a freelance basis. Almost all work from home using information and communication technologies but isolation in the home is not the norm as most maintain extensive personal networks in the industry. Nevertheless, popular imagery of the ‘electronic cottage’ and the ‘virtual organisation only superficially capture their experiences. Insecurity and weakness in the market are suggested by histories of redundancy and dependence on single client organisations including former employers.

Dependency or Self-Reliance? The Contradictory Case of Work in UK Small Business Families

The focus of this article is a relatively neglected area of social and family policy: its relationship with small business. Economic policy makers have encouraged “enterprise”, particularly in the form of small business, as a solution to problems of competitiveness and economic growth. The article uncovers what an enterprise culture actually means for some of those families who first embarked upon business ownership in the 1980s in the UK Using data from a qualitative study, it contends that, in contradiction to the enterprise rhetoric, for micro-businesses owners and their families, values of self-reliance and dependency often are found as opposite characteristics necessary for the success of a small business. A recent survey of micro-businesses in contrasting British regional economies suggests that such experiences are likely to be found amongst a substantial proportion of micro-businesses.

Social innovation, an answer to contemporary societal challenges? Locating the concept in theory and practice

Social innovation discourses see in social challenges opportunities to make societies more sustainable and cohesive through inclusive practices, coproduction and pro-active grassroots initiatives. In this paper we are concerned first that the concept has been stretched in so many directions that it is at breaking point. We illustrate this by documenting the varied uses of social innovation in different academic and policy discourses. Second, we assume that, if social innovation is to be a useful concept for policy-makers, then it must tell us something about what adjustments are needed to develop an effective political economy that is social innovation ready. Finally, we argue that what is needed is more theoretical and empirical work to help social innovation to develop into an effective policy tool.

Changing Responsibilities and Roles of the Voluntary and Community Sector in the Welfare Mix: A Review

Many Western states have sought in recent years to harness the energies of voluntary agencies and charitable bodies in the provision of welfare (Brandsen and Pestoff, 2006; Milligan and Conradson, 2006; Haugh and Kitson, 2007). More than ever is expected of the Voluntary and Community Sector (VCS) in supporting people and communities, entering into partnerships with governments, and delivering public services (Lewis, 2005; Macmillan, 2010). The mainstreaming of the VCS has been associated with a push towards market reform and reducing state obligations for welfare provision (Amin, 2009). In some European states – for example, Germany and the Netherlands – a three-way mix of state, market and voluntary sector dates back to the nineteenth century (Brandsen and Pestoff, 2006). In the UK too, on which this review article focuses, the delivery of public services by voluntary organisations and charities is far from new, but over the past decade local government and health services, especially in England, have been required to step up their engagement with VCS organisations (VCSOs) (Alcock, 2009; Di Domencio et al., 2009; Macmillan, 2010). Commitment to this sector by the government under New Labour was signalled by the creation for England of the Office of the Third Sector within the Cabinet Office in 2006 and the associated appointment of the first dedicated Minister of the Third Sector, initially Ed Miliband MP. Working with charities, social enterprises and community and faith-based organisations appeals to politicians across the mainstream British political spectrum (Di Domencio et al., 2009; Alcock, 2010); the ‘Big Society’ agenda of the Coalition government elected in 2010 promises a continuation in this direction of travel, albeit in a new regime of reduced budgets, service cuts and demands of more for less.