This research uses primary cross-sectional non-farm-household data collected from Virginia’s non-metropolitan areas for the 1989 year. The primary objective of this research is to identify the factors that influence the probability of being self-employed. Using an effective sample of 851 household heads, a model consisting of two dichotomous probit equations are specified and developed to determine the statistically significant factors that influence, first, the probability of labor force participation, and then the likelihood of being self-employed. The probit equations are estimated by the maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) procedure, using LIMDEP, an econometrics program. The Statistical Analysis Systems (SAS) is used for descriptive analysis and comparisons. The empirical results reveal that human capital characteristics influence the likelihood of labor force participation. A gender-disaggregated analysis illustrates that presence of pre-schoolers, and an employed spouse all decrease the probability of being in the labor force for women. For men, the variables have an increasing effect. Overall, two key findings emerge from the analysis with respect to identifying the determinants of being self-employed: That human capital investments in the form of education and particularly, labor market experience, play an influential role in determining the probability of being self-employed; and that access to and availability of financial resources, for example unearned income, are important factors in determining an individual’s likelihood of being self-employed. / Master of Science

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This thesis presents a case study of women working in the informal sector in the Warwick Avenue Triangle of Durban. It documents and analyses the ways in which twenty women experience and contribute to recent changes in the urban informal sector. The women in this study are seen as knowledgeable agents who actively participate in their changing social and spatial worlds. In order to do this structuration theory, as a general philosophy of society, has been drawn on and linked to substantiative bodies of theory on the informal sector and feminist theory in geography. Field methods, appropriate to the investigation of meanings the informal sector were employed. The data collected was qualitatively interpreted in the light of the theory. The thesis concludes with a summary of the main findings and suggestions are made for policy and areas of future research on women in the informal sector. / Thesis (M.Soc.Sci.)-University of Natal, Durban, 1993.

The aim of this thesis is to compare the taxation of dependent and independent activities, which are defined in detail in the first part of this work, together with the theoretical aspects of taxation. The second part analyzes the tax deductions (individual income tax, health insurance and social security) and compares the taxation of self-employed and employees at different income levels.

Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Technology: Fashion at the Durban University of Technology, 2013. / Due to the high levels of unemployment in Durban South Africa, the New Venture Creation (NVC) groups I coached/mentored were seeking to become self-employed, to find social and economic independence. I have observed that many of the people in my NVC groups seemed to lack, self-confidence and self-esteem in the start-up process of their business. These lacunae pose a problem, as they are all necessary if one wants to create a viable, sustainable and profitable business. The reason that I coach these emerging entrepreneurs is to assist in building their self-confidence and self-esteem so that they have the courage to “go for it”. The problem I have sought to address in this research is: How do I influence emerging entrepreneurs to become sufficiently self-confident to be able to design, establish and sustain their own employment and employment for others? I work on the assumption that most people have the capacity to be self-employed. I have used autoethnography with action research to describe the interventions that I initiated, report on their implementation, as well as the evolution of new perceptions and understandings that developed as a result. By using my own and the participants visual data with still images and video with visual narrative I demonstrate the evidence of my living theory and self-study to influence creative economic independence in others and reflect critically on what has been done and achieved, and critically assess the way forward. I verbally explained the ethical issue of obtaining consent to use names and photographs in my study to the participants. My explanation was followed by obtaining written consent from the five key participants and others in the pictorial data.

<p>SAMMANFATTNING</p><p>Vi lever i en tid av ständiga och snabba förändringar. Detta sägs även gälla i arbetslivet. Framförallt kvinnornas roll i arbetet är i förändring, de tar allt större plats inom företagsmarknaden. Det blir allt vanligare att kvinnor startar och driver företag, många av dessa är små.</p><p>Vårt gemensamma intresse för den realistiska livsformsanalysen och kvinnligt företagande blev grunden för detta arbete. Det var av intresse för oss att söka finna svar på hur kvinnliga småföretagare upplever sin situation gällande balans mellan fritid och arbete. Vi ville ta reda på vilka livsformer dessa kvinnor lever för att öka vår förståelse för hur detta påverkar synen på vad som är viktigt i livet och vilka medel de tar till för att nå sina mål i enlighet med detta.</p><p>Livsformsanalysen söker öka vår förståelse för andra individer och hur de väljer att leva sina liv. Alla har vi olika mål och medel för att nå dessa och olika definitioner på vad som är det goda livet. Den livsform vi lever styr på många sätt hur vi ser på verkligheten. Vi utgick från att ett livsformsperspektiv skulle vara fruktbart för denna undersökning då det skulle ge oss förklaringar till det som skiljer olika företagare åt. Vår förförståelse var att kvinnor till större del tar ansvar för hem och familj, det var därför spännande att utröna hur de klarar av att balansera detta ansvar med företagande.</p><p>Då det är upplevelsen av de kvinnliga småföretagarnas situation vi velat undersöka valde vi att göra en kvalitativ undersökning. Vi genomförde fem intervjuer med småföretagande kvinnor som visade sig leva olika livsformer och därmed ha olika förutsättningar för sitt företagande. Gemensamt för dem är att de alla delvis lever självständighetens livsform. I enlighet med detta har de svårt att skilja arbetsliv från privatliv. Analyser av materialet visade att den eller de livsformer företagaren lever påverkar hur hon söker finna balans i tillvaron.</p><p>Nyckelord: Livsformer, kombinationslivsform, balans, småföretagare och kvinnor</p> / <p>ABSTRACT</p><p>We are living in a time of constant and rapid change. This also applies to work life. This applies in particular on the women’s role at work, women gain more ground in the business market. It is becoming more common for women to start and lead their own businesses, many of these are small.</p><p>Our mutual interest in the realistic life mode analysis and in women who run their own businesses became the base of this composition. It was in our interest to find answers about how self employed women experience their situation concerning balance between leisure time and the time of work. We aspired to find out what life modes these women live. This in order to increase our understanding of how this influences their view of what is most important in life and the means they use to acquire their goals.</p><p>The life mode analysis was created to increase our understanding of other individuals and the way they chose to live their lives. All of us have different goals and means to reach them, we have also got different views of what the good life is. The life mode one person lives in many ways predicts how he or she looks upon reality. We assumed that a life mode perspective analysis would be productive on this study since it would explain the differences amongst the self employed women. Our pre understanding was that women usually take on the main responsibility for the home and family .It was interesting to us to find out how they manage to balance this responsibility and their businesses.</p><p>Since we wanted to explore the women’s experiences in our study we chose to make a qualitative research. We made five interviews with self employed women. We found out that they live different life modes, this gives them different conditions under witch they run their businesses. What they all have in common is that they, in part, live the independent life mode. In accordance to this they find it difficult to separate their time of work from their leisure time. Our analysis shows that the life mode or life modes influences how the business woman chooses to find her balance in life.</p><p>Key words: Life modes, combinations of life modes, balance, self employed women</p>

This thesis focuses on the factors that have influence on tax burden of self-employed in the Czech Republic. Selected factors are: the way of recording income and expenditure, possibilities of achieving business income individually, in cooperation or through participation in unincorporated association and the amount of profit. The main goal of the thesis is to find the combination of the way of recording income and expenditure and the way of achieving business income that results into the lowest tax burden. The analysis of the tax burden is based on six representative self-employed. This sample of self-employed was created upon real data collected in past 5 years. Tax burden was measured by two indicators -- the ratio of contributions to the tax base and the ratio of contributions to the gross profit.

With the number of Asian immigrants continually increasing in New Zealand society, Asian immigrant businesses have been appearing more rapidly in New Zealand, particularly in Auckland. The primary purpose of this study is to enquire into why a certain Asian immigrant group become business people after migrating to Auckland, New Zealand. In addition, it investigates the level of their business activity and the level of happiness with their new life in New Zealand. This study examines the growing phenomenon of Asian immigrants, and the entrepreneurship rate of ethnic groups through existing statistics. The study focuses on Korean immigrants. Twenty self-employed Koreans who are running a business in Auckland participated in the study. They were invited to talk about why they became self-employed business people and related matters about their business activity. The study found that Korean immigrants chose self-employment as a means of getting a job. They gave up seeking mainstream employment opportunities due to the language barrier and their inability to cope with a new society and new system. Other fundamental factors in their decision to become entrepreneurs were that firstly, they were willing to invest a considerable amount of their own money and secondly, they preferred to participate in the workforce rather than to depend on the New Zealand welfare system. Based on the information acquired through the research, the study reported that the recently increased numbers of Asian businesses are partly attributable to New Zealand business immigration policy which introduced a new business category – Long Term Business Visa (LTBV). The findings from this research pointed to commitment that immigrant businesses contribute to the New Zealand economy and New Zealand society as taxpayers and potential employers.

It seems that for many people, spaces on the web are an integral part of their lives. This may include seeking out learning opportunities in online communities. There is plenty of buzz about these cyberspaces whether they are part of new social media configurations or commercialized product-related spaces cultivated by enterprises. It is important to explore how online spaces mayor may notcreate new locations of educational possibilities for workers. The subtle, and sometimes not so subtle, fusion of these technologies into work-learning practices warrants attention. This research project focuses on online communities as sites of learning, with an over-arching question of: How do self-employed workers experience informal work-related learning in an online community? Community can describe a gathering of people online that is organic and driven by a shared interest. These online spaces may also be purposefully nurtured by professional associations, workplaces, or businesses. This research project focuses on these spacesoutside the auspices of formal online courses. I draw on Actor Network Theory (ANT) to explore how work-learning is enacted in online communities and the implications of the intertwining of people and objects in multiple, fluid and distributed actor-networks. I also use the notion of legitimate peripheral participation from Situated Learning theory to explore how different possibilities for learning are shaped by locations and trajectories within a work practice and larger community of practitioners. Data was collected by interviewing 11 self-employed workers and then following the actors as objects of interest surfaced. This dissertation is a collection of five papers as well as introduction and conclusion chapters and a background chapter on ANT. Findings explore notions of online collectives shifting to more networked configurations, the complexity of work-learning practices unfolding in multiple spaces, contradictions between Web2.0 rhetoric and practices as different associations with knowledge and novel ways of knowing are enacted, and questions about the politics of technology that emerge from uncertainties around delegation, invisible practices, and necessary literacies. Given the need to pull objects out of the background and into critical inquiry, I also explored how a researcher interviews technology objects as participants in a study. / Adult Education

SAMMANFATTNING Vi lever i en tid av ständiga och snabba förändringar. Detta sägs även gälla i arbetslivet. Framförallt kvinnornas roll i arbetet är i förändring, de tar allt större plats inom företagsmarknaden. Det blir allt vanligare att kvinnor startar och driver företag, många av dessa är små. Vårt gemensamma intresse för den realistiska livsformsanalysen och kvinnligt företagande blev grunden för detta arbete. Det var av intresse för oss att söka finna svar på hur kvinnliga småföretagare upplever sin situation gällande balans mellan fritid och arbete. Vi ville ta reda på vilka livsformer dessa kvinnor lever för att öka vår förståelse för hur detta påverkar synen på vad som är viktigt i livet och vilka medel de tar till för att nå sina mål i enlighet med detta. Livsformsanalysen söker öka vår förståelse för andra individer och hur de väljer att leva sina liv. Alla har vi olika mål och medel för att nå dessa och olika definitioner på vad som är det goda livet. Den livsform vi lever styr på många sätt hur vi ser på verkligheten. Vi utgick från att ett livsformsperspektiv skulle vara fruktbart för denna undersökning då det skulle ge oss förklaringar till det som skiljer olika företagare åt. Vår förförståelse var att kvinnor till större del tar ansvar för hem och familj, det var därför spännande att utröna hur de klarar av att balansera detta ansvar med företagande. Då det är upplevelsen av de kvinnliga småföretagarnas situation vi velat undersöka valde vi att göra en kvalitativ undersökning. Vi genomförde fem intervjuer med småföretagande kvinnor som visade sig leva olika livsformer och därmed ha olika förutsättningar för sitt företagande. Gemensamt för dem är att de alla delvis lever självständighetens livsform. I enlighet med detta har de svårt att skilja arbetsliv från privatliv. Analyser av materialet visade att den eller de livsformer företagaren lever påverkar hur hon söker finna balans i tillvaron. Nyckelord: Livsformer, kombinationslivsform, balans, småföretagare och kvinnor / ABSTRACT We are living in a time of constant and rapid change. This also applies to work life. This applies in particular on the women’s role at work, women gain more ground in the business market. It is becoming more common for women to start and lead their own businesses, many of these are small. Our mutual interest in the realistic life mode analysis and in women who run their own businesses became the base of this composition. It was in our interest to find answers about how self employed women experience their situation concerning balance between leisure time and the time of work. We aspired to find out what life modes these women live. This in order to increase our understanding of how this influences their view of what is most important in life and the means they use to acquire their goals. The life mode analysis was created to increase our understanding of other individuals and the way they chose to live their lives. All of us have different goals and means to reach them, we have also got different views of what the good life is. The life mode one person lives in many ways predicts how he or she looks upon reality. We assumed that a life mode perspective analysis would be productive on this study since it would explain the differences amongst the self employed women. Our pre understanding was that women usually take on the main responsibility for the home and family .It was interesting to us to find out how they manage to balance this responsibility and their businesses. Since we wanted to explore the women’s experiences in our study we chose to make a qualitative research. We made five interviews with self employed women. We found out that they live different life modes, this gives them different conditions under witch they run their businesses. What they all have in common is that they, in part, live the independent life mode. In accordance to this they find it difficult to separate their time of work from their leisure time. Our analysis shows that the life mode or life modes influences how the business woman chooses to find her balance in life. Key words: Life modes, combinations of life modes, balance, self employed women