Purpose – This article explores the criminal workplace activities of both employers and employees in Ukrainian enterprises. It challenges traditional definitions of corruption and suggests that the practices that can be observed fit into the category of organised crime because of the country's...

To tackle participation in unregistered employment, the conventional policy approach has been to deter such work by increasing the penalties and risk of detection. Recently, an alternative preventative approach has emerged that tackles participation in unregistered employment by improving...

PurposeThis paper evaluates critically the assumption that the main reason for acquiring domestic services from the off-the-books economy is to save money. MethodologyData is reported from an Internet survey of 5,500 people living in households with one or more members in employment in the city...

This paper evaluates critically the contrasting theories of informal employment that variously read this sector as a leftover of pre-capitalism, a by-product of a new emergent form of capitalism, a complement to formal employment or an alternative to the formal economy. Until now, a common...

To understand entrepreneurs' motivations, it has become increasingly common to distinguish between those driven by necessity (or pushed) and those driven by opportunity (or pulled) into entrepreneurship. Until now, entrepreneurs operating wholly or partially in the informal economy have been...

Mirroring the representation of informal workers in a third world context as displaying entrepreneurial qualities, recent years have witnessed the emergence of a similar view of the informal sector in western nations as a hidden enterprise culture. Until now, however, few attempts have been made...

In recent decades, the field of entrepreneurship studies has become increasingly interested in the relationship between entrepreneurship and the informal economy. This paper reviews this burgeoning sub-field of entrepreneurship studies that recognizes how entrepreneurs do not always conduct...

Studies on women entrepreneurs in the informal economy no longer view them merely as a residue from some pre-modern mode of production that is disappearing. Instead, they are either read through a structuralist lens as marginalised populations engaged in low quality work conducted under poor...

Even though entrepreneurs are commonly depicted as risk-takers, little evaluation has occurred of whether they weigh up the costs of being caught and the level of punishments, and engage in off-the-books working practices. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the degree to which entrepreneurs...

To evaluate critically the conventional view that entrepreneurs are either necessity- or opportunity-driven, empirical data is reported from England, Ukraine and Russia on the motives of a specific group of entrepreneurs, namely those operating wholly or partially in the informal economy....