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The relationship between freelance workforce intensity, business performance and job creation

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  • Andrew Burke

    (Trinity College Dublin)

  • Marc Cowling

    (University of Derby)

Abstract

Despite the growing recognition that freelancers or temporary contract workers are increasingly being used by organisations to enable them to become more dynamic and innovative, there is a lack of research exploring the extent and manner in which freelancers create value-added and affect net job change for employees. Most analyses view freelancers as substitutes for employees who compete for the same work and so add little or no value-added over that already provided by employees. More recent perspectives portray freelancers as non-competing complementary providers of differentiated labour who help create jobs for employees by enabling businesses to become more agile and entrepreneurial. We explore this empirical agenda and find that freelancers are associated with sales growth in businesses and net job creation for core employees. In the process, we also discover that in order to establish these effects, firms must achieve a critical mass of freelancers in their workforce of a scale around 11% before a positive association emerges. This finding has central relevance for managers seeking to use freelance workforce intensity to enhance business performance. Moreover, while it has some intuitive appeal, this discovery requires further research to fully understand its cause and the process generating this outcome.

Suggested Citation

  • Andrew Burke & Marc Cowling, 2020. "The relationship between freelance workforce intensity, business performance and job creation," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 55(2), pages 399-413, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:sbusec:v:55:y:2020:i:2:d:10.1007_s11187-019-00241-x
    DOI: 10.1007/s11187-019-00241-x
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Milena Nikolova & Boris Nikolaev & Christopher Boudreaux, 2023. "Being your own boss and bossing others: the moderating effect of managing others on work meaning and autonomy for the self-employed and employees," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 60(2), pages 463-483, February.
    2. Ivona Huđek & Polona Tominc & Karin Širec, 2021. "The Impact of Social and Cultural Norms, Government Programs and Digitalization as Entrepreneurial Environment Factors on Job and Career Satisfaction of Freelancers," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(2), pages 1-20, January.
    3. Ivona Huđek & Polona Tominc & Karin Širec, 2021. "The Human Capital of the Freelancers and Their Satisfaction with the Quality of Life," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(20), pages 1-23, October.
    4. André Stel & Jorge Barrientos-Marín & Leonel Caçador-Rodrigues & Ana Millán & José María Millán, 2023. "Measuring performance differentials across entrepreneurship types," International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal, Springer, vol. 19(3), pages 981-1016, September.
    5. Abdul Waheed & Majed Alharthi & Sher Zaman Khan & Muhammad Usman, 2022. "Role of Industry 5.0 in leveraging the Business Performance: Investigating Impact of Shared-Economy on Firms’ Performance with Intervening Role of i5.0 Technologies," SAGE Open, , vol. 12(2), pages 21582440221, April.

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