Despite a widespread recognition in the mainstream entrepreneurship literature that many legitimate entrepreneurs do not pursue purely profit-driven commercial goals, the small but burgeoning literature on entrepreneurship in the informal economy has assumed that entrepreneurs operating wholly...

PurposeThe aim of this paper is to evaluate the degree to which there is cross-national cooperation when tackling undeclared work and how the fight against undeclared work in Europe might be more effectively coordinated. MethodologyTo do this, a multi-stage inductive approach is used involving a...

Re-reading the economic landscape of the western world as a largely noncapitalist landscape composed of economic plurality, this paper demonstrates how economic relations in contemporary western society are often embedded in noncommodified practices such as mutual aid, reciprocity, co-operation...

Conventionally, street entrepreneurs were either seen as a residue from a premodern era that is gradually disappearing (modernisation theory), or an endeavour into which marginalised populations are driven out of necessity in the absence of alternative ways of securing a livelihood...

This paper re-evaluates the explanations for informal work in third world cities. Until now, informal work has been theorized either as a residue (modernisation), by-product of contemporary capitalism conducted out of economic necessity (structuralism) or an alternative to formal work chosen due...

PurposeThis paper evaluates whether early-stage entrepreneurs and the established self-employed in rural communities trade off-the-books and whether this tendency varies across deprived and affluent rural localities.MethodologyFace-to-face interviews were conducted with 350 households in both...

Purpose -- Studies on women entrepreneurs either read women through a structuralist lens as marginalised populations engaged in low quality work or through a neo-liberal lens as engaged in relatively higher quality endeavour more as a rational choice. The aim of this paper is to evaluate...

In recent decades, it has been widely assumed that undeclared work is rife amongst the self-employed. Until now, however, few have evaluated the extent and nature of the participation of the self-employed in undeclared work and whether they do so out of choice or necessity. The aim of this paper...

Purpose – This paper aims to evaluate critically the meta-narrative that there is no alternative to capitalism. Building upon an emerging body of post-structuralist thought that has begun deconstructing this discourse in relation to western economies and post-Soviet societies, this paper...

A widespread assumption has been that undeclared work is rife in the European construction industry. Despite this, there have been no European-wide surveys of the prevalence and character of undeclared work in this sector of the economy. To fill this gap, the findings are reported of a 2007...