One-person enterprises and the phenomenon of hybrid self-employment: evidence from an empirical study
The complex interaction of technological development and socio-demographic change has accelerated a structural change in the economy, resulting in a changing working environment and new forms of employment. In the field of self-employment, an emerging trend towards one-person enterprises can be observed, which already represent more than 50 % of all Austrian companies. Based on a representative sample of 626 one-person enterprises in Carinthia, one of the federal countries in Austria, we found out that these micro enterprises are mainly driven by motives like self-realization or working without hierarchies. However, their emergence is also partly due to a lack of opportunities in the (dependent) labour market. Additionally, we found evidence for the phenomenon of hybrid self-employment, meaning that a significant part of the one-person enterprises (nearly 20 %) is additionally engaged in dependent work. The primary aim of this paper was to identify factors influencing these hybrid forms of employment status between dependent work and self-employment. Based on a binary Logit model, we found evidence that the hybrid employment status is mainly determined by age, the educational level, the situation in which the one-person enterprise was founded, the duration of the enterprise as well as the motives for being self-employed.