oa Bundeling van kracht, of gezamenlijk op jacht?

Joining forces, or joint acquisition?The relation between network position and economic performance of solo self-employed

Solo self-employed individuals form an increasing proportion of the labor market. Their network position may play a crucial role in economic performance of solo self-employed. They are likely to depend heavily on their professional networks for acquisition and mobilizing additional resources. Based on data from a specially constructed panel of solo self-employed from the Netherlands we use (multinomial) logit models to explore the relation between network position and the economic performance of solo self-employed. The results show that cooperation between solo self-employed is indeed related to economic performance. However the direction of this relationship is determined by the type of network use. Cooperation on scope is positively connected to increased turnover, whereas joint acquisition is negatively related to increased turnover of solo self-employed. In other words: joining forces is better then joint acquisition.