Teleworking has first been introduced in the U.S. after the oil crisis that has happened during the 1970s. The main purpose of teleworking in that time was to save fuel and energy regarding the high prices that were practiced on it. Nowadays, this untraditional way of working is back on stage as the improvements in technology have considerably contributed to its spreading and the rise of the e-commerce industry has increased the demand of teleworkers. Our study focuses on the teleworkers in the context of startups and analyze the effects of them on the entrepreneurial atmosphere that involves these small ventures. There is evidence that startups are likely to hire teleworkers because they usually have small offices. Moreover, besides keeping low costs in terms of structure and free up more space, they are motivated to employ them in order to become more productive. But besides this little insight, a very few has yet explored further on this research area, although it would have been interesting for employers to know more about it. Thus, our study questions how teleworkers that have been depicted as assets for startups foster entrepreneurship. Geographically speaking, our research focuses on the French territory and startups that are thus based in France. This study was conducted using a qualitative study and using interviews as a way to gather data. To answer our research question, we have interviewed five teleworkers from French startups and five employers/managers that are actually working with these telecommuters. We followed the principles of semi-structured interviews by using an interview guideline and following it in the main guidelines. We have structured our interviews in three main themes regarding our topic and the theoretical framework we have developed: teleworking, startup and innovation, entrepreneurship and innovation. Our results have demonstrated that the better work environment, and the flexibility provided by teleworking were characteristics that are helping to foster entrepreneurship in startups. These teleworkers are more likely to identify and discover opportunities, but also to exploit them, and increase the innovativeness that is key to entrepreneurship and startups.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:umu-128150 |
| Date | January 2016 |
| Creators | Alounladeth, Marise, Collignon, Thibaud |
| Publisher | Umeå universitet, Företagsekonomi, Umeå universitet, Företagsekonomi |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
Page generated in 0.0014 seconds