Search results

In an era when all workers are experiencing ever increasing stress levels, it may be anticipated that the move from traditional employment to freelance working would have a positive impact on the degree of occupational stress reported. In a recent UK survey of 190 freelance consultants (women n = 133; men n = 57) in the public relations and communications industry this expectation was indeed found to be supported. Over half of respondents stated that they were definitely less stressed than when they were employed and almost all reported that they were as healthy or healthier. The findings show that the positive benefits of freelance working for PR/communications consultants are significantly greater for women, who not only experience more health benefits than men, but also report significantly more improvements in their personal relationships and are significantly more satisfied with life.

The purpose of this paper is to explore whether freelance technical writers experience greater ethical issues than do their permanently employed counterparts. Because freelance technical writers work at the whim of the client, it is possible that the perhaps tenuous nature of this relationship may leave freelance technical writers feeling obligated to complete projects about which they have ethical concerns.

This qualitative study was conducted through an e‐mail survey, a more detailed e‐mail interview, and a phone interview.

A clear majority of the respondents in this study have never had ethical issues with their clients and fell that they, not permanently employed writers, are at an ethical advantage in their work.

The respondents for this study worked for clients from a wide variety of fields and industries. Conducting additional research with controls in place to focus on specific, individual fields could prove very enlightening.

Respondents discussed the challenge of clients being wary to trust them as they worked off‐site. These results suggest that freelance technical writers, as a whole, are professionals with a high degree of personal ethics that guide their work lives. Perhaps, this research could allay fears of those previously concerned about having technical writers do work for them away from their corporate plants.

Freelance technical writers and the ethical issues that arise from their work have previously not been studied.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the major factors of client satisfaction (CS) that are critical for web development projects in freelance marketplaces. This quantitative study is done from the point of view of the web development services clients. Five major dimensions were proposed as determinants of CS from the literature review: ease of use, user interface, information, security and privacy.

A web-based survey methodology is used as the main data collection instrument. Statistical techniques such as confirmatory factor analysis and multiple linear regressions are used to analyze 162 responses of questionnaires.

The findings suggest that all factors do influence CS. In terms of strength, security had the highest level of impact on CS, so it is the strongest determinant among all factors. After security, ease of use and information are considered as strong determinants. So, this study concludes that the five major determinates do affect CS in web development projects from freelance marketplaces.

This research is limited only to the top freelance marketplaces, such as Upwork, Freelancer, Fiverr, Guru, Envato Studio, etc. The sample size is relatively small and this study is focused on web development projects only. Moreover, this research is focused only on the characteristics or attributes of the projects final outcome, i.e. website.

This study attempts to identify the important factors that have a relation with CS, thus giving freelancers an indication of what to look for when working on any web development project posted by any client in a freelance marketplace. Understanding the determinants of CS will also help Pakistani information technology freelancers involved in web development projects and services to increase their project performance, improve their CS rate and increment client following.

This presents the first study on the determinants of CS in web development projects from freelance marketplaces.

This paper describes a research project that involved an in‐depth investigation into freelancing in the public relations industry with data collected from both freelancers and their employers. The analysis of these data highlighted the complexity of issues for those working in and employing people in this sector of public relations practice. The research project produced data on themes relating to freelance practitioners’ status, skills and experience, but this paper aims to focus specifically on trends and issues for the future. The key findings under this theme are that the freelance sector has grown. A majority of clients claim an increased use of freelancers in the last year and this was linked to a “need for flexibility” and “new business development”. Also the majority of freelancers are happy and do not want to change their employment status and some respondents stated “nothing” would make them return to permanent employment. Freelance public relations appears to be meeting a trend since the early 1990s for companies to “downsize” and “outsource” workers and for employees to seek a work/lifestyle balance. Regarding patterns of work almost half of freelancers claimed to be more productive when freelancing with the key factors being that they have “fewer interruptions” and fewer “unnecessary meetings”. Of relevance to national institutes and debates about professionalisation and reputation, it was interesting that the majority of the sample were not members of a professional body. The research and its findings have implications for human resources managers employing public relations staff, public relations managers and directors who commission freelance practitioners and the freelancers themselves.

The purpose of this paper is to answer following question: what is the relationship between member activism performed through civil society organizations (CSOs) and individualized freelance activism (in form of online activism, everyday making, political consumerism or checkbook activism) independent of organizational framework? Is it a relationship of mutual competition or support?

Analysis is carried out on data from 2009 questionnaire-based survey on volunteering, representative for adult Czech population. The data set allowed the authors to relate member activism with freelance activism and in case of member activism distinguish the type of organization and the level of its professionalization.

Dominant pattern the authors identified in data is mutual support of both types of volunteering documented by significant overlap of these forms of public engagement. The most striking is the overlap for active members of new advocacy NGOs and the weakest for traditional clubs. Regression analysis shows that on an individual level “mixed activism” (compared with “pure freelance activism”) is linked with higher education and higher confidence in civic organizations.

The civil practice of individualized freelance activism was described and analysed by various authors as an activity of specific types of activist, but there has not yet been any research giving reflection on such a large scale of freelance activism types as in the analysis. The authors set them together in contrast to the member (collective, organized) form of civic activism and also took into account the influence of professionalization and type of CSOs.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that freelancing is neglected by researchers as a form of small business activity. It aims to consider whether it is possible and useful for researchers to distinguish freelancers from other types of small business owner.

The paper does this in three ways: first, by conceptualising freelance status; second, by examining the research literature on freelance workers; and, third, by estimating the size of the UK freelance workforce to demonstrate their importance.

The definition proposed permits identification of many types of freelancer hitherto neglected by researchers. Freelancers are a large and growing proportion of the UK business stock and the recent recession has led to a further expansion.

Given the size and distinctiveness of the freelance workforce, researchers might explore the similarities and differences between freelancers and other small business owners with regard to: their motivations for starting and continuing to operate on a freelance basis; experiences of business ownership and management; the heterogeneity of the freelance workforce; and the wider social, economic and political causes and consequences of freelance working.

In this chapter, we theorize about online freelancers’ approaches to work flexibility. Drawing from an ongoing digital ethnography of US-based online freelancers pursuing work on digital platforms, our data question the common conceptualizations around the flexibility of online freelancing. We posit that the flexibility of where to work, not when to work, is the most important attribute of their work arrangement. Our data show (1) the online freelancers in our study prefer the stability and sustainability of full-time work over freelancing when both are offered as remote options; (2) full-time remote employment increases these workers’ freelancing control / flexibility; (3) these workers keep freelance work options open even as they transition to more permanent full-time work arrangements. We discuss how these findings relate to workplace culture shifts and what this means for contemporary working arrangements. Our insights contribute to the discourses on knowledge-based gig work and for what it means to study individuals online.

The research study provides empirical insights on the relationship between entrepreneurial leadership (EL), entrepreneurial passion for founding (EPF), entrepreneurial bricolage (EB) and project success (PS), in the case of freelancers. The study aims to get a better understanding of whether freelancers, who behave like entrepreneurial leaders, can successfully complete projects through EB.

The study collected data from 209 freelancers through snowball sampling, in two waves, with a time-lag of fourteen days, to better examine the causality of variables. Data were analyzed by Model No. 4 and 7 (i.e. mediation and moderation, respectively) of Process macro.

Drawing on the effectuation theory, the results show that EB mediates the relationship between EL and PS and EPF moderates this relationship.

The freelancers can formally establish businesses later, after knowing whether they can complete these new types of projects. These online freelancing platforms can provide special services to freelancers who first want to test their skills on unrelated projects. In sum, the paper suggests that freelancers can be successful entrepreneurial leaders.

The EL, EPF, EB and PS are studied in the context of the informal sector, i.e. freelancing, which is the emerging working style in the world. It provides an in-depth understanding of phenomena in freelancers that lacks background literature.

The alphabet is running out of letters to tag new generations of young people who are entering the workforce. Gen Xers are now executive managers as Gen Ys settles into corporate careers. But what happens when Gen Z moves into the workplace? It seems oddly appropriate that these true digital natives will close out the alphabet because they are poised to reinvent the very nature of what we think of as work and business. Globalization and automation are both decisive factors in the creation of goods and services, often with less and less human oversight. At the same time, technology is creating a new, decentralized and digitized workforce that work more as free agents than company employees. This article will examine how companies can manage the transition of a workforce that is automated and can work from anywhere.

This chapter critically evaluates the role of creative identity and how this shapes entrepreneurial identity. The main driver for creative practitioners is one of being ‘creative’, but this is in combination with the factors that support entrepreneurial behaviours, and it provides the narrative for their entrepreneurial identity. The quest to operate successfully as a creative practitioner in the creative industries drives entrepreneurial behaviour. The research examines the relationship between creative identity and entrepreneurial identity and how these two identities intertwine. To respond to this question, the study critically evaluates the concept of creative identity and entrepreneurial identity with fourteen creative practitioners in the UK, working as either chartered architects or freelance photographers. The research employed a qualitative approach and interpretivist ontology. Semi-structured interviews were undertaken with the participants. The key finding that highlights the driver for entrepreneurial identity is the quest to operate successfully as a creative practitioner in the creative industries. This quest is underpinned by the desire to be able to express their creative identity, often referred to as a creative ‘voice’. Entrepreneurial identity and entrepreneurial behaviours function as conduits in which creative practitioners channel their primary driver of creative identity. This chapter contributes to the knowledge about creative practitioners’ entrepreneurial identity and creative identity and how these two identities relate to each other.