IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/woemps/v12y1998i4p579-601.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

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

Author

Listed:
  • Susan Baines

    (University of Newcastle upon Tyne)

  • Jane Wheelock

    (University of Newcastle upon Tyne)

Abstract

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Susan Baines & Jane Wheelock, 1998. "Reinventing Traditional Solutions: Job Creation, Gender and the Micro-Business Household," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 12(4), pages 579-601, December.
  • Handle: RePEc:sae:woemps:v:12:y:1998:i:4:p:579-601
    DOI: 10.1177/0950017098124001
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0950017098124001
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0950017098124001?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Åge Mariussen & Jane Wheelock & Susan Baines, 1997. "The Family Business Tradition in Britain and Norway," International Studies of Management & Organization, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 27(3), pages 64-85, September.
    2. Pollak, Robert A, 1985. "A Transaction Cost Approach to Families and Households," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 23(2), pages 581-608, June.
    3. Hart, Mark & Hanvey, Eric, 1995. "Job Generation and New and Small Firms: Some Evidence from the Late 1980s," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 7(2), pages 97-109, April.
    4. William Waller & Ann Jennings, 1991. "A Feminist Institutionalist Reconsideration of Karl Polanyi," Journal of Economic Issues, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 25(2), pages 485-497, June.
    5. Jane Wheelock & Elizabeth Oughton, 1996. "The Household as a Focus for Research," Journal of Economic Issues, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 30(1), pages 143-159, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ian Worthington & Monder Ram & Trevor Jones, 2006. "Exploring Corporate Social Responsibility in the U.K. Asian Small Business Community," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 67(2), pages 201-217, August.
    2. Syed Awais Ahmad Tipu, 2012. "What have we learned? Themes from the literature on necessity driven entrepreneurship," World Review of Entrepreneurship, Management and Sustainable Development, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 8(1), pages 70-91.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Gillian Hewitson, 2001. "A Survey of Feminist Economics," Working Papers 2001.01, School of Economics, La Trobe University.
    2. Pavel Ciaian & d'Artis Kancs & Jan Pokrivcak, 2008. "Comparative Advantages, Transaction Costs and Factor Content of Agricultural Trade: Empirical Evidence from the CEE," EERI Research Paper Series EERI_RP_2008_03, Economics and Econometrics Research Institute (EERI), Brussels.
    3. Ahrens, Jan-Philipp & Landmann, Andreas & Woywode, Michael, 2015. "Gender preferences in the CEO successions of family firms: Family characteristics and human capital of the successor," Journal of Family Business Strategy, Elsevier, vol. 6(2), pages 86-103.
    4. J. Michael Collins & Elizabeth Odders-White, 2021. "Allowances: Incidence in the US and Relationship to Financial Capability in Young Adulthood," Journal of Family and Economic Issues, Springer, vol. 42(3), pages 533-544, September.
    5. Chaddad, Fabio & Valentinov, Vladislav, 2017. "Agency costs and organizational architecture of large corporate farms: evidence from Brazil," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 20(2), pages 201-220.
    6. Petrick, Martin, 2004. "Governing Structural Change And Externalities In Agriculture: Toward A Normative Institutional Economics Of Rural Development," IAMO Discussion Papers 14878, Institute of Agricultural Development in Transition Economies (IAMO).
    7. Pareena G. Lawrence & Marakah Mancini, 2008. "La toma de decisiones de los hogares en Venezuela," Revista de Economía Institucional, Universidad Externado de Colombia - Facultad de Economía, vol. 10(18), pages 213-239, January-J.
    8. Elissa Braunstein & Nancy Folbre, 2001. "To Honor and Obey: Efficiency, Inequality, and Patriarchal Property Rights," Feminist Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 7(1), pages 25-44.
    9. Viitanen, Tarja K., 2014. "The divorce revolution and generalized trust: Evidence from the United States 1973–2010," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 25-32.
    10. Kulic, Nevena, 2013. "The type and duration of family unions and income sharing: The implications for women's economic well-being," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 7-15.
    11. Brandts, Jordi & Solà, Carles, 2010. "Personal relations and their effect on behavior in an organizational setting: An experimental study," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 73(2), pages 246-253, February.
    12. Johan F. M. Swinnen & Liesbeth Dries & Karen Macours, 2005. "Transition and agricultural labor," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 32(1), pages 15-34, January.
    13. Rafael Barrera Gutiérrez, 2011. "El vacío institucional en el modelo de elección racional aplicado a la fecundidad," Revista de Economía Institucional, Universidad Externado de Colombia - Facultad de Economía, vol. 13(25), pages 223-248, July-Dece.
    14. Robert Fleck & F. Hanssen, 2009. "“Rulers ruled by women”: an economic analysis of the rise and fall of women’s rights in ancient Sparta," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 10(3), pages 221-245, July.
    15. Guido Corbetta & Carlo Salvato, 2004. "Self–Serving or Self–Actualizing? Models of Man and Agency Costs in Different Types of Family Firms: A Commentary on “Comparing the Agency Costs of Family and Non–family Firms: Conceptual Issu," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 28(4), pages 355-362, July.
    16. Matthew Painter & Jonathan Vespa, 2012. "The Role of Cohabitation in Asset and Debt Accumulation During Marriage," Journal of Family and Economic Issues, Springer, vol. 33(4), pages 491-506, December.
    17. Davidova, Sophia & Thomson, Kenneth J, 2014. "Family Farming in the Enlarged EU: Concepts, challenges and prospects," 142nd Seminar, May 29-30, 2014, Budapest, Hungary 170155, European Association of Agricultural Economists.
    18. Ciaian, Pavel & Kancs, d'Artis & Pokrivcak, Jan, 2011. "Comparative Advantages, Transaction Costs and Factor Content in Agricultural Trade: Empirical Evidence from the CEE - Vantaggi comparati, costi di transazione e contenuto dei fattori nel commercio agr," Economia Internazionale / International Economics, Camera di Commercio Industria Artigianato Agricoltura di Genova, vol. 64(1), pages 67-101.
    19. Patricia Apps & Ray Rees, 2011. "Relational Contracts, Taxation and the Household," CESifo Economic Studies, CESifo Group, vol. 57(2), pages 245-258, June.
    20. Matyukha, Andriy, 2017. "Business groups in agriculture impact of ownership structures on performance: The case of Russia's agroholdings," Studies on the Agricultural and Food Sector in Transition Economies 254051, Institute of Agricultural Development in Transition Economies (IAMO).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:woemps:v:12:y:1998:i:4:p:579-601. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.britsoc.co.uk/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.