Ambitions of own account workers

More and more people choose to become an own account worker. Currently, there are around 800.000 own account workers in the Netherlands (de Volkskrant, 2012a). This specific type of entrepreneur contributes both at the aggregate as well as individual level. They contribute to GDP by their labor productivity and by performing innovative activities (SER, 2010). Moreover, they create employment by hiring other own account workers and contribute to society for instance by offering services at a lower rate to people being less fortunate. Additionally, own account workers enrich their personal lives by creating a better balance between working and private life (van der Kamp, 2011). Results often start with the ambition to achieve something. The link between ambition and results has been established for entrepreneurship in general. It is of interest to know what the drivers are of the ambitions of a non-negligible specific group of entrepreneurs: the own account worker. Their ambitions are the engines of future developments. There has been found a gap in literature regarding ambitions of own account workers. The aim of this study is to provide exploratory insights into the ambitions of own account workers and the drivers of these ambitions. The focus is on various social, growth, innovative and operational ambitions. Moreover several internal (e.g. main start-up reason, forms of capital) and external factors (e.g. entrepreneurial climate) are considered as potential drivers of ambition. Data has been conducted by means of a questionnaire and more than 500 own account workers participated in the survey. Insights are provided into the level of existence of various ambitions by means of a descriptive analysis. It turns out that the level of ambition varies across different types of ambition. Results of ordered logistic regressions indicated the drivers of ambitions. Some factors are specifically related to certain ambitions. In general, it turned out that need for achievement, social capital, educational level and occupational involvement are important drivers of numerous ambitions.