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Small businesses are dominant in most economies and their owners likely experience high levels of distress. However, we have not fully explored how these common businesses meaningfully differ with respect to the stress process. Understanding the meaningful variations or subgroups (i.e., heterogeneity) in the small business population will advance occupational health psychology, both in research and practice (e.g., Schonfeld, 2017; Stephan, 2018). To systematize these efforts, the author identifies five commonly appearing “heterogeneity factors” from the literature as modifiers of stressors or the stress process among small business owners. These five heterogeneity factors include: owner centrality, individual differences, gender differences, business/ownership type, and time. After synthesizing the research corresponding to each of these five factors, the author offers specific suggestions for identifying and incorporating relevant heterogeneity factors in future investigations of small business owners’ stress. The author closes by discussing implications for advancing occupational health theories.

This research compares the effects of career credentials and family factors on self-employment careers in the United States and Western Germany. In Germany, both general education and vocational credentials structure self-employment, primarily at entry. In the United States, general education alone structures self-employment, primarily by stabilizing the self-employment careers of workers with higher credentials. Intergenerational transmission of self-employment is more prominent among men, while spousal transmission of self-employment status is more prominent among women. In the United States, but not in Germany, there is evidence of a “caretaker” pathway that brings mothers of young children into self-employment for short periods of time.

This paper uses a representative sample of U.S. workers to examine how self-employment may reduce work-life conflict. We find that self-employment prevents work from interfering with life (WIL), especially among women, but it heightens the tendency for life to interfere with work (LIW). We show that self-employment is connected to WIL and LIW by different causal mechanisms. The self-employed experience less WIL because they have more autonomy and control over the duration and timing of work. Working at home is the most important reason the self-employed experience more LIW than wage and salary workers.

This study explores the manner in which gender inequality in the transition into self-employment is associated with the institutional contexts of family and labour market structures in the East Asian countries of Japan, Korea and Taiwan. This work contributes to theoretical debates on gender inequality and entrepreneurship because prior research on female self-employment has lacked a theoretical viewpoint on the mechanisms by which conditions for female entrepreneurship depend on the macro-structural arrangements of family and labour markets. By evaluating female employment in light of the patriarchal Confucian ideology, I examine gender disparities among individuals in terms of effects of paternal self-employment, their experiences as family workers and their marital status on their transition into self-employment. The results of this study show that women in Japan and Taiwan do not benefit from the self-employed status of their fathers as much as their male counterparts. Additionally, female family workers in the three countries had considerable disadvantages in becoming self-employed, which implies that female family workers continue to be exploited by self-employed owners, namely, their husbands. In contrast, the effects of marital status, with both sexes, on their transitions into self-employment differed widely among the three countries, reflecting the various barriers to self-employment and the differing conditions for female employment in each country. Overall, this study demonstrates that gender inequality in the transition into self-employment is related to family structures unique to these East Asian countries. This study, however, did not compare the dynamics of self-employment between East Asian societies and other industrialised nations. Future studies should explore whether the findings of this study are applicable to other industrialised societies.

In 2019, Brazil had approximately 53.4 million entrepreneurs, of which 60.2% were start-ups. The contingent of nascent entrepreneurs was 11.1 million people and in just one year it grew 390%, a fact that can be explained, on the one hand, by the beginning of the economic recovery of the country which, although timid, began arousing with the gross domestic product closing the year 2019 with growth of 1.1%, and on the other hand, by the slow cooling of the national unemployment rate that reached 11.0% in the last quarter of 2019 (IBGE, 2019). Women have been occupying an important space in the country's entrepreneurial activities, with an initial specific rate of entrepreneurship (total early-stage entrepreneurial activity (TEA)) of 23.1%, similar to that of men, and established specific rates of entrepreneurship (total establishing entrepreneurial activity (TEE)) of 13.9% (GEM, 2019). Despite the enthusiasm brought by the numbers, it is necessary to pay attention to what are the entrepreneurial activities performed by these women, since in a country like Brazil, transformations brought by innovative thoughts, technological development, and expansion of education are not privileges of the entire population. Besides the differences between genders, even among women, the impact of changes in society occurs in different ways, and the “pure” concept of entrepreneurship, associated with innovation and the creation of new products and services, is valid for only a portion of them, leaving to others the broader concept related to creativity, risk, use of available resources, and economic sustainability in a context where individual characteristics and unfavorable structural conditions are intertwined (Haas, 2013). In this sense, the objective of this work is to present the national reality of female entrepreneurship, contributing with the understanding of who are the Brazilian women entrepreneurs that correspond to these “pure” and broad concepts and, therefore, shed light on new studies and research that can contribute with more accurate diagnoses about these women.

This study investigates the formal/informal employment earnings gap in Turkey. We focus on the earnings differentials that can be explained by observable characteristics and unobservable time-invariant individual heterogeneity. We first, estimate the standard Mincer earnings equations using ordinary least squares (OLS), controlling for individual, household, and job characteristics. Next we use, panel data and the quantile regression (QR) techniques in order to account for unobserved factors which might affect the earnings and the intrinsic heterogeneity within formal and informal sectors. OLS results confirm the existence of an informal sector penalty almost half of which is explained by observable variables. We find that formal-salaried workers are paid significantly higher than their informal counterparts and of the self-employed confirming the heterogeneity within the informal employment. QR results show that pay differentials are not uniform along the earnings distribution. In contrast to the mainstream literature which views informal self-employment as the upper-tier and wage-employment as the lower-tier, we find that self-employment corresponds to the lower-tier in the Turkish labor market. Finally, fixed effects estimation indicates that unobserved individual characteristics combined with controls for observable characteristics explain the pay differentials between formal and informal employment entirely in the total and the female sample. However, informal sector penalty persists in the male sample.

This chapter considers the process of entrepreneurial activity to deploy financial technologies (fintech) through mandate-specific new companies in Latin America. We deal with important historical issues such as defining the term, establishing temporal and industrial activity boundaries, positioning this particular process within other organizational forms typical of the region, the role of women, and other relevant issues such as the modernization of retail payments and personal lending. A central question is whether fintech start-ups have had a “scissor” effect in the entrepreneurial process of Latin America: at the base of the pyramid (i.e., reducing frictions to support overall entrepreneurial activity, increasing financial inclusion, etc.) and near the top (by creating new business leaders). As a result, this chapter provides an initial assessment of gender disparities and barriers enabling women entrepreneurs in the fintech ecosystem.

Empirical studies show low pecuniary returns as a result of switching from wage employment to entrepreneurship. We reconsider the pecuniary gains attributable to this switching by using an event study design and a variety of identifying assumptions aimed at obtaining robust estimates of causal effects. An earnings equation is estimated on data covering the whole Norwegian population of individuals matched to the entire population of firms established in the period 2002–2013. We find unambiguous evidence that the average returns to entrepreneurship are negative for individuals entering entrepreneurship through self-employment and positive, but modest for incorporated startups. The positive returns to incorporated entrepreneurship comes at the cost of much higher income risk: incorporated entrepreneurs experience an increase in the standard deviation of log earnings growth of almost 75% compared to remaining in wage employment. While there is a huge gender gap in entrepreneurship rates, we find no significant difference between men and women in the average returns to entrepreneurship.

Over the years, at the international level, the social construction assumption according to which women would be less innovative than men and, consequently, also less prone to be involved in innovative fields, since their educational path decisions to career path decisions, has long prevailed. This has resulted in a widespread lack of representation of women in more innovative sectors, in comparison to their male counterparts. In recent years then, if the pandemic has had an impact, at least for some specific socio-economic contexts, especially on those that can be typically considered as ‘necessity entrepreneurs’, it has to be said that it has been able also to generate some virtuous dynamics crosswise related to innovative issues. In particular, this chapter aims to go in depth into these issues from the perspective of innovative women entrepreneurs in the attempt to answer to the following questions: how does the socio-economic environment affect innovative women entrepreneurs? And, what are the unique experiences, achievements and contributions of innovative women entrepreneurs in Italy? In order to answer to these specific research questions, an analysis based on direct interviews with a sample of Italian innovative women entrepreneurs has been conducted.

Purpose – The chapter analyzes the conciliation strategies of the Chinese business families in Spain.

Methodology – The data was gathered as part of a major fieldwork project that included in-depth interviews and participant observation.

Findings – The research reveals a kind of transnational motherhood, which is invisible in the academic field. The strategy for work-family balance of the Chinese in Spain situates the mothers primarily in their productive dimension. Management of the work-family balance (the productive and reproductive work) depends on the phase of the family business path. Chinese families enact two different strategies for balancing work-family life: “transnationalized” reproduction and “externalized” reproduction. In both strategies, Chinese women do not engage in intensive motherhood, but at the same time they do remain highly involved in the home. The analysis of the productive-reproductive continuum shows the complexity of the gender relationships within the Chinese family enterprise.

Theoretical implications – Fieldwork data discloses a dynamic social relationship and suggest a revision of the theoretical assumptions used to explain the links among gender, work, and family in transnational space.

Practical implications – As global immigration continues to grow, adjustments and flexibility will be required of all parties. Immigrant families will have to contend with family reunification policies that vary from nation to nation. Because immigrant family dynamics can be culture-specific, receiving nations will require flexible policies in housing, education, and other sectors.