Flourish, fight or flight : Health and well-being in self-employment over time - associations with business success

• Purpose: Around 9% of the working population in Sweden consists of self-employed business owners, but a considerable amount of them struggle to consolidate or expand their businesses. Among the factors predicting business success the decisive role of long-term health of business owners has been acknowledged only recently, but longitudinal studies testing this assumption are scarce. Based on the conservation of resources theory, good health can be seen as a resource that helps business owners to tackle high workloads and make business succeed.Design: Data from the Swedish Longitudinal Occupational Health Survey is used. Starting in 2012, N=554 self-employed have answered three or more times in the biannual data collection. Latent growth curve modelling is employed to study general and mental health trajectories and their associations with business survival over time.Results: Preliminary descriptive analyses on biannual changes suggest that roughly one in ten self-employed leaves self-employment at follow-up. Job demands and emotional exhaustion are higher among those who leave compared to those who remain in business. After integrating new data collected in 2018, growth curve analyses are run over the whole longitudinal sample, and associations of health trajectories to business survival will be tested.Limitations: Data is collected with questionnaires, and business success is operationalized as business survival only.Research/Practical Implications: Study results increase knowledge on the self-employed’s health developments, vulnerable groups with poor health and risk of business failure can be detected.Originality/Value: This is one of few studies on longitudinal developments of health in selfemployed business owners.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Psykologi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Psychology (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

self-employment

health

well-being

business success

Psychology

psykologi

Publikations- och innehållstyp

vet (ämneskategori)

kon (ämneskategori)