The Hidden Enterprise Culture: Entrepreneurship in the Underground Economy
Author(s): Colin C. Williams (Author)
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd
Publication Date: 27 July 2006
Language: English
Print length: 288 pages
ISBN-10: 9781845425203
ISBN-13: 1845425200
Book Description
Portraying how entrepreneurs often start out conducting some or all of their trade on an ‘off-the-books’ basis and how many continue to do so once they become established, this book provides the first detailed account of the vast and ubiquitous hidden enterprise culture existing in the interstices of western economies. Until now, the role of the underground economy in enterprise creation, entrepreneurship and small business development has been largely ignored despite its widespread prevalence and importance.
In contrast to much of the previous literature that views the underground economy as low-paid, exploitative sweatshop work that should be deterred, this book takes a fresh, more positive perspective that considers the underground economy as a hidden enterprise culture. Colin C. Williams prescribes the means by which western governments can best harness this hidden culture of enterprise. He outlines detailed policy initiatives that seek to assist business ventures in setting up on a formal footing, and aim to encourage underground enterprises and entrepreneurs to make the transition into the realm of legitimacy.
This book provides a lucid guide as to how the hidden culture of enterprise can be brought into the open. As such, it will prove invaluable to a wide-ranging audience including scholars and students of business studies, entrepreneurship, management, economics and regional science.
Editorial Reviews
Review
‘This book will be an excellent primer for policy makers wishing to understand the nature and contradictory significance of the underground economy and needing to design suitably subtle policy responses to it.’ — Roger Lee, Growth and Change
‘The Hidden Enterprise Culture
is a top pick for any economist or academician interested in this field, as well as for any underground entrepreneur who wants to make their enterprise lawful with the fewest possible legal complications.’ — – Midwest Book Review
‘Strongly recommended for policy makers and students of business.’ — Global Business Review
From the Author
Conventionally, the underground economy in the western world has been represented as a sphere of low-paid exploitative work conducted by employees under sweatshop-like conditions. In this book, my objective has been to display that this is a mis-representation. Displaying the vast array of enterprise and entrepreneurial endeavour that takes place in the underground economy, the intention has been to re-read this sphere as a realm that needs to be transferred into the legitimate economy rather than simply eradicated. In order to show how this might be achieved, the book then provides a comprehensive review of the multitude of measures that governments can pursue in order to transfer this work into the legitimate economy. The emphasis throughout is on seeking to identify ‘pull’ initiatives that provide incentives to enable the transfer of such work into the legitimate realm, and can complement the existing ‘push’ initiatives that seek to deter such work. The outcome is a pioneering rethinking of the nature of the underground economy in the western world and a comprehensive review and evaluation of the multitude of initiatives available to western governments to enable them to encourage the transfer of enterprise and entrepreneurship from the underground economy into the legitmate realm.
About the Author
Colin C. Williams, Professor of Public Policy, Sheffield University Management School (SUMS), University of Sheffield, UK
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