SMEs As the Unknown Stakeholder : Entrepreneurship in the Political Arena

Investigates how and to what extent the self-employed and micro-enterprise workers can be represented in the social arena. A cross-sector approach to responsibility for government as well as private businesses. Front Matter....Pages i-xxxiv Introduction....Pages 1-5 Front Matter....Pages 7-7 The Self-Employed as the Unknown Worker....Pages 9-26 Front Matter....Pages 27-27 Legal Status and Working Conditions of Self-Employed Persons in Bulgaria....Pages 29-42 Three Layers Across the Board in France....Pages 43-45 Lawyers and Engineers in Greece....Pages 46-52 Tax Simplification in Hungary....Pages 53-55 Upstream Negotiation of Newspaper Vendors in Italy....Pages 56-60 Taxi Deregulation in Poland....Pages 61-78 Emerging Farmers’ Markets in Slovakia....Pages 79-81 The Legal Status of the Self-Employed in Spain....Pages 82-89 Front Matter....Pages 91-91 Towards an Ecology of Industrial Relations....Pages 93-108 SMEs as the Unknown Stakeholder of European Social Dialogue....Pages 109-129 Understanding the Unknown Stakeholder....Pages 130-149 Front Matter....Pages 151-151 Separating the Useful from the Beautiful....Pages 153-176 Back Matter....Pages 177-197 Workers represented by the trade unions in Europe are government workers and, to a lesser extent, the workers of large enterprises. SMEs as the Unknown Stakeholder investigates how and to what extent the self-employed and micro-enterprise workers can be represented in the social arena. Strong because of their accountability and subject to competition, self-employed and micro-enterprise workers can leverage vis-̉-vis the rest of society to gain leadership and a larger share of the resources that are being diverted from productive sectors to bureaucratic sectors. The authors highlight the need to go beyond this culture and separate the useful from the beautiful, and put forward the suggestion that micro-enterprise and SME representatives should add new scopes to their way of representing their workers