Social Well-being of Entrepreneurs and Employees in Small Business

Social Well-being of Entrepreneurs and Employees in Small Business


Soboleva I.V.

Dr. Sci. (Econ.), Head of Centre for Employment Policy and Labor Relations, Institute of Economics Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia irasobol@gmail.com

ID of the Article:


For citation:

Soboleva I.V. Social Well-being of Entrepreneurs and Employees in Small Business. Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniya [Sociological Studies]. 2019. No 4. P. 57-69




Abstract

Based upon the survey of population engaged in small business undertaken in Moscow, the paper looks into interrelationship of components of social well-being of working people with different employment status. The explored components include general satisfaction with life, job satisfaction profile, stability of employment, and material situation of respondents. It is demonstrated that even in case of precarious contract employee status guaranties higher perception of employment security as compared to entrepreneurs. However, satisfaction with life is more connected with material situation of respondents than with characteristics of their job, and perception of stability in the sphere of employment matters least of all. Two divisions characterize well-being profile of population engaged in small business. The first singles out the area of relative prosperity encompassing working employers and employees with a regular official employment contract. Those two categories have very similar job satisfaction profiles and fare better as compared to own-account workers and employees with precarious contracts. However, when it comes to overall satisfaction with life, employers outsmart employees with a regular contract as well. The second division separates employees from entrepreneurs. For entrepreneurs, no matter employers or own-account workers, their feeling of employment insecurity is stronger and interrelation between perceptions of various aspects of their job and overall job satisfaction on the one hand, and overall life satisfaction on the other is higher than for employees irrespective of contract type. It indicates greater involvement of the former in the world of work. The most vulnerable employment status category with the highest share of dissatisfied with their life encompasses employees with a non-standard contract. They form a marginal labour market segment characterized by a very weak interdependence of their social well-being and their current and anticipated situation in the world of work.


Keywords
precarious employment; social well-being; life satisfaction; job satisfaction; employment status; small business

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Content No 4, 2019