How Diverse is Entrepreneurship? Observations on the social heterogeneity of self-employment in Germany

The discussion on entrepreneurship often treats entrepreneurs as agents of ideas of economic change and growth. Entrepreneurs are considered to serve as potential multipliers delivering individual and social wealth and prosperity. In that context entrepreneurship has been treated as a rather homogenous category, internal differences were not in the focus of academic talk. In public policy discourse entrepreneurship and the labour market category of self-employment are often used interchangeably. Images and interpretation of self-employment are mostly based on comparison of self-employment with other categories of wage or salary dependent labour market groups. This way self-employed people prove to become an averaged one-type figure. The proposed paper wants to highlight the other side of economic and social reality: the heterogeneity of self-employment. Referring to empirical data for the case of Germany the argumentation intends to illuminate different levels of social and economic integration of self-employed people. Working parameters and firm sizes, economic sectors of activity, income patterns, working hours and biographies have diversified and became increasingly heterogeneous so that further discussion is ultimately provoked: Which entrepreneurship are we talking about when talking entrepreneurship? Where are links between different fractions of the category of self-employment compared to each other and to other socio-economic groups? The contribution must be regarded as a theoretical and empirical task to connect entrepreneurship with debate on innovation, culture and finance.self-employment; heterogeneity; entrepreneurship

The social embeddedness of consumption - towards the relationship of income and expenditures over time in Germany

Expenditures and their patterns over time are expressions of the standard of living of individuals, households, and the society they live in. Nevertheless social and economic analysis focused rather on the analysis of production than on consumption, and income was widely used as a main indicator of (economic) well-being. On the other hand, expenditure regards as a measure to describe and estimate the participation of households in the wealth of nation. Therefore, there is an interest in the relationship of income and spending money. It is often considered that expenditure and income are the two sides of the same coin called 'social inequality'. This assumption implies a strong relationship between these two measures of welfare inequality. Due to the lack of longitudinal data in Germany, we used repeated crosssectional data (RCS) in our empirical analysis which is based on the West German Income and Expenditure Survey (IES) in 1973, 1978, 1983, 1988 and 1993. The IES's are representative cross-sections of all West German households, collected by the Federal Statistical Office of Germany. Descriptive methods are used to separate age, cohort, and period effects just as the RCS enables us to use a linear model to shed some light on this issue. The analysis indicates that the relationship between income and expenditure is given but weak: The higher the income the looser the concrete expenditure structure in terms of real consumption is. All in all, the social organisation of consumption is a research object in itself to obtain information about the living standard of individuals and households. -- Ausgaben und deren Veränderung im Zeitablauf sind Ausdruck des Lebensstandards von Individuen, Haushalten und der Gesellschaft, in der diese leben. Dennoch bezog sich die soziologische und ökonomische Analyse eher auf die Güterproduktion denn auf deren Konsum, und Einkommen wurde als ein Maß zur Beschreibung der (ökonomischen) Wohlfahrt verwendet. Andererseits dienen die Ausgaben als Maß zur Beschreibung und Abschätzung der Partizipation von Haushalten an der Wohlfahrt einer Gesellschaft. Und darin liegt das Interesse am Verhältnis zwischen Einkommen und Ausgaben begründet. Es wird häufig unterstellt, daß Ausgaben und Einkommen zwei Seiten derselben Medaille darstellen, die als 'soziale Ungleichheit' bezeichnet wird. Diese Annahme impliziert eine Beziehung zwischen den beiden Maßzahlen zur Beschreibung der Wohlfahrtsungleichheit. Die empirische Analyse basiert auf den Einkommens- und Verbrauchsstichproben (EVS) der Jahre 1973, 1978, 1983, 1988 und 1993 für Westdeutschland. Bei den EVS handelt es sich um repräsentative Querschnitterhebungen, die vom Statistischen Bundesamt durchgeführt werden. Auf der Grundlage dieser Daten wird versucht, Aussagen über die Beziehung zwischen Einkommen und Ausgaben zu treffen. Es werden vornehmlich Methoden der deskriptiven Statistik verwendet, um Alters-, Kohorten- und Periodeneffekte isolieren zu können. Weiterhin ermöglicht die Verbindung der einzelnen EVS die Verwendung induktiver statistischer Methoden. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, daß Einkommen und Ausgaben nicht in einem festen Verhältnis zueinander stehen. Je höher die Einkommen sind, desto offener ist der Zusammenhang zur konkreten Ausgabenstruktur. Insgesamt betrachtet bedeutet dies, daß die soziale Organisation des Konsums für sich genommen als Forschungsgegenstand zur Erlangung von Informationen über den Lebensstandard von Individuen und Haushalten mit berücksichtigt werden muß.

Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Spatial Disparities: Divisions and Changes of Self-employment and Firms

Topic of the paper is the development of professional self-employment during the last decades in Germany. The discussion is divided into a theoretical and an empirical section. The first theoretical part deals with the term entrepreneurship and asks for its overlapping with categories of self-employment and of innovation. Although these terms cover only partially the same meanings, political discourse often equals the slogan to foster entrepreneurship and innovation with an increase of self-employment. The second section of the paper is concerned with concrete investigation of development patterns of occupational self-employment since the beginning of the 1990th until 2006 based upon microcensus data for Germany. First of all, the overall increase of self-employment becomes visible but the principle lines hide further fundamental structural changes. A majority of those „new“ self-employed people belongs into the category of solo-self-employment and micro firms without further employees. An equation of entrepreneurship with innovation activities and in-creasing self-employment ratios falls too short and is problematic with respect to discussion on economic policy needs to increase growth. Differentiation for regions, economic sectors and gender offers a picture which is contradictory and which does not correspond with some causal explanations as found conventionally.self-employment, entrepreneurship, professionals, development, Germany

Renaissance of Entrepreneurship? Some remarks and empirical evidence for Germany

The paper deals with margins of entrepreneurship where small business owners are almost working on their own having no or just a few employees and where one can find also people working with low returns and having firms without stability or prosperous dynamics. However, even the area of entrepreneurship at the margins seems to be a wide field. It highlights not only the broad margins of entrepreneurship but also the fluent boarders between entrepreneurship and the informal sector on the one side and the system of the labour market on the other. New firms – even those which are very successful at a later point of career – are almost created in an experimental period of testing market and product ideas in which business founders are still employed or registered as unemployed people. The practical starting-point of an entrepreneurial existence falls into a fluent continuum of different activities being closely connected to spheres of dependent work as employees or periods of seeking a new job during unemployment. With growing solo self-employment a new social phenomenon in the structure of the labour market and the division of occupations has emerged in which different social developments are overlapping each other. The question for the landscape of solo self-employment and related driving forces of their emergence is of crucial research interest: Must they be regarded primarily as a result of pushes by labour market deficiencies or are they a response to new life-styles and working demands which act as pulling factors into self-employment? In other words, does solo self-employment serve as a valve of a pressing labour market or must it be regarded more positively as a new option of the classic division of labour by which an increasing number of people find new self-reliant and also stable jobs? The idea of the paper is to discuss this particular issue of margins of entrepreneurship not only within the conventional scope of entrepreneurship discussion but within an integrated framework which combines entrepreneurship analysis with labour market research and studies on social stratification and social mobility. The paper will not come about with definite last answers but hopes to contribute to that debate by presenting better information.Self-employment; entrepreneurship; labour market; empirical analysis

The Social Embeddedness of Consumption: Towards the Relationship of Income and Expenditures over Time in Germany

Expenditures and their patterns over time are expressions of the standard of living of individuals, households, and the society they live in. Nevertheless social and economic analysis focused rather on the analysis of production than on consumption, and income was widely used as a main indicator of (economic) well-being. On the other hand, expenditure regards as a measure to describe and estimate the participation of households in the wealth of nation. Therefore, there is an interest in the relationship of income and spending money. It is often considered that expenditure and income are the two sides of the same coin called “social inequality”. This assumption implies a strong relationship between these two measures of welfare inequality. Due to the lack of longitudinal data in Germany, we used repeated crosssectional data (RCS) in our empirical analysis which is based on the West German Income and Expenditure Survey (IES) in 1973, 1978, 1983, 1988 and 1993. The IES’s are representative cross-sections of all West German households, collected by the Federal Statistical Office of Germany. Descriptive methods are used to separate age, cohort, and period effects just as the RCS enables us to use a linear model to shed some light on this issue. The analysis indicates that the relationship between income and expenditure is given but weak: The higher the income the looser the concrete expenditure structure in terms of real consumption is. All in all, the social organisation of consumption is a research object in itself to obtain information about the living standard of individuals and households.

Better Health and Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) from a global, regional and local economic perspective

Assisting technologies aim to provide more support in the meeting of one's daily needs and the preservation of one's autonomy and quality of life. Continual developments in medicine, medical equipment, nursing and medical care are assumed to lead to new types of care being created. A high degree of social and economic relevance has been attributed to assisting technologies, as well as information and communication systems, by scientists and politicians alike, particularly in connection with the development, promotion and organization of so-called senior-friendly environments and with ambient assisted living (AAL).economic development; ambient assisted living; health care system; assisting technologies; health care; new technologies; health economy

Better health and ambient assisted living (AAL) from a global, regional and local economic perspective

Assisting technologies aim to provide more support in the meeting of one's daily needs and the preservation of one's autonomy and quality of life. Continual developments in medicine, medical equipment, nursing and medical care are assumed to lead to new types of care being created. A high degree of social and economic relevance has been attributed to assisting technologies, as well as information and communication systems, by scientists and politicians alike, particularly in connection with the development, promotion and organization of so-called senior-friendly environments and with ambient assisted living (AAL). Here the focus is especially upon the aged of the future, their specific demands and resources, which these technologies should be able to serve while adhering to their individual requirements. These new technologies can also be extremely relevant to people surrounding the elderly. They can make a considerable difference to the way in which people are able to live together for example by assisting the nursing care provided by close relatives and they may represent new opportunities to the providers of outpatient and inpatient nursing and medical care. -- Assistierende Technologien sollen der besseren Unterstützung bei der Deckung von Bedürfnissen des täglichen Lebens und zur Erhaltung von Selbständigkeit und Lebensqualität dienen. Es ist davon auszugehen, dass durch die kontinuierliche Entwicklung in der Medizin, der Medizintechnik sowie assistierender Technologien in der medizinischen und pflegerischen Versorgung neue Versorgungsmöglichkeiten geschaffen werden. Insbesondere im Zusammenhang mit der Entwicklung, der Förderung und der Ausgestaltung sogenannter altersgerechter Lebenswelten bzw. eines ambient assisted living (AAL) wird den unterstützenden Technologien und Informations- und Kommunikationstechniken von wissenschaftlicher und politischer Seite eine hohe gesellschaftliche und wirtschaftliche Relevanz zugewiesen. Im Fokus stehen dabei vor allem die zukünftigen Älteren und ihre spezifischen Bedarfe und Ressourcen, die diese Technologien ihren individuellen Bedürfnissen entsprechend nutzen können sollen. Derartige Techniken können aber auch für Personen aus dem sozialen Umfeld der Älteren von hoher Relevanz sein. So können diese die Gestaltung des Zusammenlebens erheblich ändern - beispielsweise durch die Unterstützung bei der pflegerischen Versorgung durch Angehörige - und beispielsweise den Anbietern im Bereich der gesundheitlichen und pflegerischen ambulanten und stationären Versorgung neue Möglichkeiten der Versorgung bieten.

Orientalism Reconsidered: Turkey in Barbara Frischmuth\u27s Das Verschwinden des Schattens in der Sonne and Hanne Mede-Flock\u27s Im Schatten der Mondsichel

Recent German criticism has demonstrated that the relationships of Austria and Germany with the Orient have been more complex than Edward Said\u27s Orientalism makes it appear. Furthermore, Said only touches upon gender issues. Studies like Rana Kabbani\u27s Europe\u27s Myths of Orient: Devise and Rule explore the convergence of race, class, and gender in the conceptualization of the Orient. Kabbani claims that in Elias Canetti\u27s Die Stimmen von Marrakesch the narrator\u27s identification with the colonizer\u27s position enters into his representation of self as much as does his gender. My essay demonstrates how the Austrian writer Barbara Frischmuth and the German writer Hanne Mede-Flock represent their female protagonists\u27 interaction with the Orient as more complex and less colonizing than that of Canetti\u27s narrator. While Frischmuth rewrites the Bildungsroman to subvert Eurocentric assumptions underlying travel literature, Mede-Flock goes one step further by taking the focus away from the individual protagonist and intellectual life in the city, and by representing the encounter with Turkey as political. However, Turkey remains a Eurocentric construct in the two novels, and their authors, by attempting to undermine some cultural stereotypes, unwittingly reinforce others

Senior Entrepreneurship. Self-employment by Older People – an Uncharted Territory

An ageing population means a growing number of healthy older people with human capital, financial resources, and time available to contribute to economic activities. However, the economic potential of older people remains mostly underused, which leads to the question, how to make best use of the underused. One way would be fostering senior entrepreneurship. The paper discusses which factors may positively influence or hinder the self-employment of older people. Overall, attention will be drawn to the relevance of older people in the field of business and entrepreneurial economics. From an economic point of view, it seems necessary not only to focus on young people but also to take into account the large and still growing economic potential of the elderly. There seems to be a treasure in waiting