Dependent Self-employment

This book investigates work relationships on the border between employment and self-employment by bringing together economic, sociological and legal research approaches. The research finds an increase in subcontracting activities which appear to be replacing hierarchies in firms by market forms of governance. However, there is evidence that an increasing share of outsourcing activities is based on contracts where the outsourced worker is both economically dependent on the firm and in hierarchical subordination to it. Dependent Self-Employment addresses why firms deploy dependent self-employed workers, and explores why individuals supply this form of work. By questioning the informal and formal mechanism by which dependency is created, this text examines those who are the dependent self-employed workers,and how firms can solve the control-flexibility dilemma in these work relationships.