Beyond legitimate entrepreneurship: the prevalence of off-the-books entrepreneurs in Ukraine.Introduction Despite the recurring depiction of entrepreneurs as risk-taking super-heroes, the literature on entrepreneurship has seldom questioned whether this means that they always play the game by the rulebook. Notably absent from nearly all literature on entrepreneurship, that is, is the notion that these risk-takers might weigh up the costs of being caught and the level of punishments and then decide to do some or all of their business on an off-the-books basis. In this paper, therefore, the aim is to evaluate the degree to which entrepreneurs operate in the off-the-books economy in order to question the validity of the ideal-type representations of entrepreneurs as legitimate super-heroes that permeates the entrepreneurship literature. In the first section of this paper, therefore, the ways in which entrepreneurship has been conventionally depicted in the literature will be reviewed so as to display how the wholesome, clean and pure narratives of entrepreneurship that dominate the literature have written out off-the-books entrepreneurs from their portrayals followed in the second section by a review of what is known about the relationship between entrepreneurship and off-the-books endeavor. The third section then reports one of the first surveys to evaluate the degree to which entrepreneurs start-up their businesses trading on an off-the-books basis conducted in Ukraine during 2005-06. Finding that the vast majority of entrepreneurs start-up on an off-the-books basis, the concluding section calls for a move beyond the currently dominant super-hero representation of entrepreneurs and towards a fuller understanding of the lived realities of entrepreneurship. Before commencing, however, it is necessary to define what is here meant by off-the-books work or what has been variously called "informal employment," the "underground economy," "shadow work" and "hidden sector" to name but a few of the nouns and adjectives employed. Despite the array of terms, a strong consensus exists amongst both academics and policy-makers regarding how to define such work. The off-the-books economy is widely accepted as referring to the paid production and sale of goods and services that are unregistered by, or hidden from the state for tax and/or benefit purposes but which are legal in all other respects (European Commission, 1998; Feige, 1999; Grabiner, 2000; ILO, 2002a; Marcelli, Pastor and Joassart, 1999; OECD, 2000a, b, 2002; Portes, 1994; Thomas, 1992; Williams and Windebank, 1998). As such, only paid work that is illegal because of its non-declaration to the state for tax and/or social security purposes is included in the off-the-books economy. Paid work in which the good and/or service itself is illegal (such as drug trafficking) is excluded, as is unpaid work. This economic sphere, like all others, nevertheless, possesses blurred edges. Some include work where gifts are given. Moreover, illegal services in some nations are legal in others, such as prostitution, meaning that what is included in the off-the-books economy can differ significantly across nations. Here, however, and reflecting the consensus, only paid transactions are included, and solely exchanges of legal goods and services in the country under consideration. Representations of Entrepreneurship Unlike the off-the-books economy where there is a strong consensus regarding what it is, entrepreneurship has proven far harder to pin down. This has been the case for a long time. As Cole (1969: 17) put it nearly four decades ago, "for ten years we ran a research centre in entrepreneurial history and for ten years we tried to define the entrepreneur. We never succeeded." Some two decades later, the literature was still no closer. As Brockhaus and Horowitz (1986: 42) concluded, "there is no generic definition of the entrepreneur" while Shaver and Scott (1991: 24) argued that "entrepreneurship is like obscenity: nobody agrees what it is, but we all know it when we seen it." Today, little has changed. In a now notorious phrase, Hull, Bosley and Udell (1980) likened the search for a definition of the entrepreneur as akin to "hunting the heffalump." An agreed definition remains as distant as ever. Why might this be the case? In one very insightful explanation, Jones and Spicer (2005: 235) contend: But what if research into the entrepreneur has, in its very failure, identified something critically important about the operation of the category of the entrepreneur, that is, that it is essentially indefinable, vacuous, empty? What if entrepreneurship has not failed at all, but has uncovered something significant about the underlying structure of entrepreneurial discourse, that is, that "the entrepreneur" is an empty signifier, an open space or "lack" whose operative function is not to "exist" in the usual sense but to structure phantasmal attachment? This is an important insight because even if the literature has been unable to reach any consensus on how to define entrepreneurship, there does seem to be strong and broad agreement on two issues regarding its representation. Nearly all representations in the voluminous literature, first, depict entrepreneurship in a positive and virtuous manner and second, portray it in a relatively clean and sanitized way. Indeed, for the purposes of this paper, as well as this special issue which seeks to understand why many activities in morally, legally and ethically contested contexts are not usually considered as entrepreneurship, this insight is crucial. It is perhaps this overarching desire of the "mainstream" entrepreneurship literature to provide a positive, virtuous and clean portrait of entrepreneurs that results in other (and "othered") forms of entrepreneurship being consigned to the margins or even put outside the boundaries of entrepreneurship. As Jones and Spicer (2005: 237) explain, such a portrayal: offers a narrative structure to the fantasy that coordinates desire. It points to an unattainable and only vaguely specified object, and directs desire towards that object... One secures identity not in 'being' an enterprising subject but in the gap between the subject and the object of desire. This lack is central to maintaining desiring ... it is precisely the ... mysterious nature of entrepreneurship discourse that allows it to be so effective in enlisting budding entrepreneurs and reproducing the current relations of economic domination. Viewed in this manner, it quickly becomes apparent why off-the-books entrepreneurs have been written out of mainstream entrepreneurship. To detail how off-the-books enterprises and entrepreneurs are an inherent part of the lived practice of contemporary entrepreneurship, to put it plainly, would tarnish this object of desire and curtail people's emotive attachment to achieving this fantasy state of being. To see that nearly all definitions and depictions of entrepreneurship represent it as a desired object, one needs only consider how they are acclaimed as what Cannon (1991) calls "economic heroes" or Burns (2001: 1) views as "the stuff of 'legends' ... held in high esteem and held up as role models to be emulated"; they are "super heroes" (Burns, 2001: 24). This super-heroic status is apparent whichever theoretical approach to entrepreneurship is adopted (see Cunningham and Lischeron, 1991: 47). Whether one adopts the "great person" perspective that views them as born (rather than made) and reads them as possessing a "sixth sense" along with intuition, vigor, energy, persistence and self-esteem and contrasts them with "mortals" who "lack what it takes," or one adopts the more socially constructed theoretical approaches of the classical, management, leadership or intrapreneurship schools of thought, the assumption is that the entrepreneur is a super heroic figure possessing virtuous attributes that "lesser mortals" do not. In none of these schools are negative attributes ever attached to the entrepreneur. What, therefore, are these positive qualities possessed by the entrepreneur? This is the subject of much debate. Different commentators and schools of thought put forward contrasting attributes, champion certain qualities over others, argue over whether particular traits are applicable or not, and debate the emphasis given to different qualities, or sets of qualities. Indeed, so much so that it feels somewhat like walking into a minefield to provide here a list of the possible characteristics, traits and/or qualities of entrepreneurs. Yet this needs to be briefly done if one is to more fully understand how the entrepreneur is being defined and depicted in this voluminous literature as well as how they are always represented in heroic terms. Here, therefore, and following Burns (2001: 27), the various characteristics, traits and/or qualities possessed by entrepreneurs that are being debated in the literature are listed as: the need for independence; the need for achievement; internal locus of control; ability to live with uncertainty and take measured risks; opportunistic; innovative; self-confident; proactive and decisive with higher energy; self-motivated; and vision and flair. Many similar lists exist, albeit with slightly different emphases (e.g., Baty. 1990; Blanchflower and Meyer. 1991; Bolton and Thompson. 2000; Brockhaus and Horowitz. 1986; Carr. 2002; Chell, Haworth and Brearly. 1991; Kanter. 1983; McClelland. 1961; Schumpeter. 1996; Storey and Sykes. 1996). The intense debates over each and every one of these characteristics need not here overly concern us. What is important is that all of these qualities construct a representation of the entrepreneur as a heroic figure. To see this, one needs only consider that if the above are the qualities of entrepreneurs, then the dualistic opposite, the "non-entrepreneur," is somebody who is dependent, lacks the will to achieve, believes in destiny, cannot live with uncertainty and avoids risks, fails to take opportunities, lacks the ability to innovate, lacks confidence, is reactive, indecisive and lacks energy, lacks the ability to motivate themselves and has no vision or flair. Put in more theoretical terms, the entrepreneur/non-entrepreneur dualism represents what Derrida (1967) calls a binary hierarchy. For this apostle of post-structuralist thought, hierarchical binaries lie at the core of western thought which, first, conceptualizes objects/identities as dualisms where each side is stable, bounded and constituted via negation and second, reads the resultant binary structures hierarchically in that the first term (the superordinate) is endowed with positivity and the second term, the subordinate (or subservient) "other," with negativity. Viewed through this lens, it is quickly apparent that entrepreneurship is a superordinate endowed with positivity while the unnamed nonentrepreneurship category is the subordinate "other" endowed with negativity whose meaning is established solely in relation to its superordinate opposite. To contest such binary hierarchical thought, Derrida (1967) argues that first, one can revalue the subordinate term, namely the non-entrepreneur. The problem, however, and as he points out, is that revaluing the subordinate in a binary hierarchy is difficult since it also tends to be closely associated with the subordinate terms in other binary hierarchies (e.g., non-entrepreneur is associated as shown above with dependency, an external locus of control, risk avoidance, an inability to innovate, indecision, no vision, a lack of flair, motivation and energy). A second strategy is thus to highlight the inter-dependencies between the two sides of the dualism and a third strategy is to blur the boundaries between the terms so as to undermine the solidity and fixity of identity/presence. It is this latter strategy that is adopted in this paper. The intent is to show the disparity between the ideal-type representation and the everyday realities of entrepreneurship where participants do not always play by the rulebook in order to sully the clean, sanitized and virtuous image of the entrepreneur as always possessing positive attributes. To achieve this, I here focus upon unraveling the nature of entrepreneurship in Ukraine so as to bring to the fore how many entrepreneurs engage in off-the-books transactions in their daily practices in order to challenge the notion that these are super-heroic figures. Before doing so, however, it is first necessary to briefly review what is already known about entrepreneurs who engage in off-the-books work. Entrepreneurship and Off-the-Books Work Over the years, a small but steadily expanding stream of entrepreneurship thought has explicitly challenged this largely wholesome representation of entrepreneurship. The study by Kets de Vries (1977) is one of the best known attempts to attach negative attributes to entrepreneurs by arguing that they are the product of unhappy family backgrounds, particularly situations in which the father is a controller and manipulator who is remote and often seen as a deserter. The classic study of the entrepreneur as somebody who does not always play by the rulebook, meanwhile, is that of Collins, Moore and Unwalla (1964), partially corroborated by Bhide and Stevenson (1990). There are also more recent attempts to deconstruct the virtuous and positive image of the entrepreneur (e.g., Armstrong, 2005; Deutschmann, 2001; Fournier, 1998; Jones and Spicer, 2005, 2006; Williams, 2007). Here, I wish to further contribute to this tarnishing of the entrepreneur by taking as a starting point the "old adage that if you scratch an entrepreneur you will find a 'spiv'" (Burns, 2001: 4) and studying whether entrepreneurs engage in off-the-books transactions. In most countries, a significant proportion of economic endeavor takes place in the off-the-books economy. This is the case whatever region of the world is considered. In the diverse array of countries that constitute the Third World, one of the most widely accepted estimates is that between one-half to three-quarters of non-agricultural employment is located in the off-the-books economy and that the majority who engage in such work do so on an own account or self-employed basis. Some 48% of non-agricultural employment in North Africa is estimated to be off-the-books, 51% in Latin America, 65% in Asia and 72% in sub-Saharan Africa (ILO 2002b). Differentiating between those working off-the-books on their own account in self-employment and those in off-the-books waged employment (such as casual day laborers, domestic workers, temporary workers without secure contracts or social protection), moreover, the finding is that the self-employed comprise a greater share of off-the-books workers than waged employees, representing 70% of informal workers in sub-Saharan Africa, 62% in North Africa, 60% in Latin America and 59% in Asia (ILO, 2002b). Indeed, in recent decades, it has been increasingly recognized that many of these self-employed operating off-the-books display entrepreneurial qualities (Browne, 2004; Cross, 2000; De Soto, 1989, 2001; Franks, 1994; ILO, 2002a; Rakowski, 1994). From street-sellers in the Dominican Republic (Itzigsohn, 2000) and Somalia (Little, 2003), through off-the-books garment businesses in India (Das, 2003; Unni and Rani, 2003) and the Philippines (Doane, Srikajon and Ofreneo, 2003), to home-based micro-enterprises in Mexico (Staudt, 1998) and Martinique (Browne, 2004), the now widespread consensus is that this is a sphere of enterprise and entrepreneurship (Itzigsohn, 2000; Otero, 1994; Rakowski, 1994). As the ILO (2002a: 54) state, the off-the-books economy acts as "an incubator for business potential and ... transitional base for accessibility and graduation to the formal economy" and many off-the-books workers show "real business acumen, creativity, dynamism and innovation." During the past few years, and reflecting this, a similar representation has begun to emerge when discussing the off-the-books economy in the western world (Evans, Syrett and Williams, 2006; Renooy et al., 2004; Small Business Council, 2004; Williams, 2004, 2006, 2007) and importantly given the focus of this paper, also the transition economies of East-Central Europe (Smallbone and Welter, 2001). Indeed, in transition economies, this representation of the off-the-books economy both as a site of, as well as "seedbed" for, entrepreneurship has been widespread for some time (Smallbone and Welter, 2001; Szelenyi, 1988). Until now, however, there has been a paucity of evidence on the degree to which entrepreneurs start-up on an off-the-books basis. Although numerous studies enumerate the size of the off-the-books economy, few if any have so far evaluated the proportion of business ventures that start-out in this sphere. This is a significant gap in our understanding that needs to be filled. Below, in consequence, one of the first known studies to investigate this is reported. Evaluating Entrepreneurship in Ukraine Ukraine, the second-largest successor state of the former Soviet Union, is a country in which there exist strong tensions between the state and society and severe economic problems. As the 2004 New Europe Barometer reveals, although two-thirds of people in new EU member states state that most public officials are corrupt, 92% in Ukraine believe this is the case--the highest figure in all 13 East-Central European countries studied (Rose, 2005). The outcome is low "tax morality"; few Ukrainians believe in paying tax since they do not trust the state to use it for redistributive or collective purposes. When coupled with the fact that official employment declined by about one-third between 1990 and 1999 (Cherneyshev, 2006) and that 73% of Ukrainians assert that they receive insufficient from their main income to buy what they really need (Rose, 2005), it would be surprising if off-the-books transactions were not rife in contemporary Ukraine. Until now, however, and despite numerous contemporary surveys of the Ukraine labor market, including the Ukrainian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (Brown, Earle and Vakhitov, 2006; Kupets, 2006; Lehmann and Terrell, 2006; Lehmann, Pignatti and Wadsworth, 2006), the Labor Force Survey-based modular Decent Work Survey, the Enterprise Labor Flexibility and Security Survey and the People's Security Survey (Cherneyshev, 2006; Standing, 2005; Standing and Zoldos, 2001), no attempt has been made to directly collect data on off-the-books working practices (Dean, 2002). Instead, only indirect measurement methods using proxy indicators have been used to estimate its size. According to these, the off-the-books economy in Ukraine is equivalent to 47.3-53.7% of GDP using physical input proxies (Schneider and Enste, 2000) and 55-70% using currency demand (Dzvinka, 2002), with official Ukrainian government estimates, based on such proxies, asserting that it is equivalent to 55% of Ukraine's GDP (NCRU, 2005). Indeed, this perhaps explains why the official government statistics for Ukraine identify that the official unemployment rate in 2006 (using the ILO definition) is 7.9% when only 57.1% of the total population aged 15-70 in 2006 were in employment (State Statistics Committee of Ukraine, 2006). Nevertheless, both OECD experts in their handbook on measurement methods (OECD, 2002) and the most recent European Commission report on undeclared work (Renooy et al., 2004), as well as a host of academic evaluations (Thomas, 1992; Williams, 2004, 2006; Williams and Windebank, 1998) conclude that proxy measures are very limited in their usefulness. Indeed, for our purpose here which is to investigate the proportion of businesses that start-up in the off-the-books economy, such indirect proxy indicators are of little use beyond suggesting that a significant proportion of business might be operating in this sphere. In consequence, and in order to estimate the proportion of businesses that start-up on an off-the-books basis, as well as the size and nature of the off-the-books economy, during late 2005 and early 2006, a direct survey was conducted. Given the significant differences previously identified in the magnitude and nature of the off-the-books economy across affluent and deprived, as well as urban and rural, populations (Williams and Windebank, 1998), a maximum variation sampling technique was used based on these two variables to select four contrasting localities. First, and in the capital of Kiev, an affluent area was chosen, namely Perchersk, along with a deprived neighborhood, namely Vynogardar. Continuing the process of maximum variation sampling, a deprived rural area near Vasilikiv was then chosen, and finally, a town on the Ukrainian/Slovakia border was selected, U[??]hgorod. Within each locality, a spatially stratified sampling methodology was then employed to select households for interview (Kitchen and Tate, 2001). In each of the four localities, 150 households were interviewed (600 in total). In consequence, if there were 3,000 households in the area and 150 interviews were sought, then the researcher called at every twentieth household. If there was no response and/or the interviewer was refused an interview, then the twenty-first household was visited, then the nineteenth, twenty-second, eighteenth and so on. This provided a spatially stratified sample of each area. To investigate whether people had started up new business ventures and whether they had done so off-the-books, structured face-to-face interviews were conducted. Some new to this subject might believe that respondents would be unwilling to divulge such information to interviewers. However, the common finding of direct surveys across the world is that just because this work is hidden from the state for tax or social security purposes does not mean that people are unwilling to openly discuss such work with academic researchers (for a review, see Williams, 2004). Here, therefore, face-to-face interviews were conducted. First of all, this gathered data on gross household income, the employment status of household members, their employment histories, ages and gender, as well as whether they had engaged in self-employed endeavor over the past 36 months and/or started up some new business venture. Second, they were asked about the forms of work they most relied on to maintain their living standard. Third, closed-ended questions were asked about the forms of work both used by their household to get common tasks completed as well as whether members supplied both unpaid and off-the-books jobs in relation to specific tasks, followed by open-ended questions about other off-the-books work conducted and its relative importance to their household income. Fourth and finally, and using five-point likert scaling, attitudinal questions were posed about their views of the economy, politics, everyday life and their future prospects. Below, the findings are reported on, first, the importance of off-the-books work to their living standards and second, whether those who had started up self-employed and/or new business ventures in the past 36 months had done so by conducting some or all of their transactions on an off-the-books basis. The Prevalence of Off-the-Books Practices in Ukraine To understand the degree to which the surveyed population rely on off-the-books transactions for their livelihoods, respondents were asked about the form of work most important to their standard of living, along with the second most important. One in six (16.4%) reported that they rely primarily on off-the-books work for their livelihoods (see Table 1). Moreover, a further quarter of respondents state that off-the-books work is the second most important contributor to their standard of living. Some 28% of all households primarily dependent on subsistence production, that is, cite off-the-books work as their secondary strategy, 22% reliant principally on mutual aid, 30% chiefly reliant on formal employment and 14% primarily dependent on state benefits. In total, therefore, some 40% of all Ukraine households cite off-the-books work as either the principal or secondary contributor to their livelihood. Who, therefore, depends on off-the-books working practices? Contrary to the "marginality thesis" which holds that off-the-books work is concentrated amongst marginalized groups such as the unemployed or deprived populations (e.g., Gallin, 2001; Kim, 2005), this survey finds that this is not the case. As Table 2 displays, just 12.5% of households with no formal wage earner cite off-the-books work as their primary strategy compared with 23.5% of households with one formal wage earner and 13.9% of households with multiple formal wage-earners. Indeed, of all households primarily reliant on off-the-books work for their livelihood, some 51% are multiple-earner households (58% of all households surveyed), 43% single earner households (29% of surveyed households) and just 6% no-earner households (12% of surveyed households). This study thus reinforces the wealth of previous literature that has refuted the marginality thesis both in western nations (Jensen, Cornwell and Findeis, 1995; van Geuns, Mevissen and Renooy, 1987; Renooy, 1990; Williams, 2005) and transition economies (Rosser, Rosser and Ahmed, 2000; Wallace and Latcheva, 2006). In consequence, the off-the-books economy is not some marginal sphere of minor importance to a limited range of households but, rather, is an important practice for a large proportion of the Ukraine population. What types of off-the-books work, therefore, do these respondents engage in for their livelihoods? The ILO (2002b), as discussed earlier, sub-divides participants in off-the-books work into those who are self-employed and those engaged in waged employment on an off-the-books basis. If a significant proportion of off-the-books workers in Ukraine are in waged employment, then this sphere cannot be represented as a hidden enterprise culture and seedbed for new enterprise creation. The finding, however, is that just 28% of those engaged in off-the-books work are in waged employment. This is similar to the earlier reported finding by the ILO (2002b) that elsewhere in developing nations some 30-40% of off-the-books workers are found to be in waged employment on an off-the-books basis. The vast majority of off-the-books workers (72%), however, are not waged employees but doing so on an own account basis. Below, therefore, we analyze one segment of these self-employed, namely those who have started-up a new business ventures during the past three years so as to enumerate the degree to which entrepreneurs start up on an off-the-books basis. How Many Entrepreneurs Start-Up Trading Off-the-Books? The 600 face-to-face interviews conducted revealed a high-level of entrepreneurship in contemporary Ukraine. Some 331 individuals asserted that they had started-up an enterprise in the past three years. Of these, just 33 (10%) stated that their business ventures were wholly legitimate operations that were registered with the state, in possession of the required licenses and conducting all of their transactions on a declared basis for tax and social insurance purposes. The remaining 298 entrepreneurs (90%) stated that their business ventures operated wholly or partially in the off-the-books economy. Some 39% of all entrepreneurs starting-up a business venture in the past three years, that is, had a license to trade and/or the business was registered but a portion of their trade was conducted in the off-the-books economy, while 51% operated on a wholly unregistered basis with no license to trade and all of their trade was conducted on an off-the-books basis. In consequence, over half of all business start-ups are not even on the radar screen of the state and of those business start-ups registered and on the state's radar screen, some 80% operate partially in the off-the-books economy. Who, therefore, are these nascent entrepreneurs operating wholly or partially in the off-the-books economy? Above, it has been already displayed that those most dependent on the off-the-books economy are not the unemployed and relatively low-income populations as depicted in the marginality thesis. Instead, they are already in formal employment and spread across the income spectrum. The same applies when analyzing those entrepreneurs starting-up business ventures. On the whole, some 55% are in formal employment and operating their business alongside their formal waged work as an "on-the side" business venture and the remaining 45% are a mixture of various categories of people registered as non-employed including the "economically inactive" such as housewives and others unregistered as engaging in any form of employment, pensioners and people claiming unemployment benefit. This finding reinforces the evidence elsewhere that those starting-up enterprises tend to be people in waged employment, often depicted as straddling the legitimate and off-the-books economy as a "risk-reduction strategy" (McCormick, 1998), and that it is only later in the development of the enterprise that they might become fully self-employed and to leave their waged employment (e.g., Reynolds et al., 2002). As a study in Russia has displayed, 26.5% of the new self-employed work on an off-the-books basis as a second job at the outset, displaying how the off-the-books sphere is an incubator for new self-employed businesses (Guariglia and Kim, 2006). Turning to the gender of those starting-up enterprises operating wholly or partially in the off-the-books economy, moreover, although the split between men and women entrepreneurs was 40:60 for wholly off-the-books nascent enterprises, the gender ratio for ownership of nascent legitimate enterprises conducting a portion of their trade off-the-books was 70:30 in favor of men. Wholly off-the-books nascent enterprises, therefore, are operated more by women, while legitimate nascent enterprises trading off-the-books were predominantly operated by men. Most wholly off-the-books business start-ups, moreover, are relatively small-scale piecemeal operations operated as part of a survival strategy by the owner, whilst the legitimate enterprise start-ups operating partially in the off-the-books economy are relatively larger-scale and operated by their proprietors more to "get-ahead" that to "get-by." Indeed, nearly all wholly off-the-books business start-ups had no employees, while some 35% of registered business start-ups working partially off-the-books had additional employees. Examining the sectors in which such enterprises operated, the vast majority (90%) were service sector rather than manufacturing sector enterprises, and most of these (85%) sold chiefly to final users rather than other firms (i.e., they were chiefly consumer service or business-to-consumer enterprises rather than business-to-business firms). This consumer service sector focus, nevertheless, was more marked amongst wholly off-the-books business start-ups than amongst registered business start-ups conducting a portion of their trade off-the-books (95% of wholly off-the-books start-ups were in the consumer services sector compared with 70% of registered start-ups trading partially off-the-books). Of those setting up an enterprise, about 80% use the skills, tools and/or social networks directly related to their current or previous formal employment and/or employment-place in their off-the-books business ventures. For example, those working as plumbers in their formal occupation tend to operate plumbing enterprises "on the side" or tend to use contacts from their employment-place in order to find work for their off-the-books enterprise. An example would be university teachers who offer University entrance examination candidates tuition on an off-the-books basis in order to help them pass their entrance examinations. The remaining fifth of those starting-up a business are doing so in fields that arose out of what Stebbins (2004) refers to as some "serious leisure" such as a hobby or interest that leads them to set up enterprises selling goods produced or services resulting from it. This included those who had learned some skill by pursuing some hobby or interest (such as painting, carpentry) and had then decided to establish an enterprise based on this skill. In Ukraine, therefore, the vast majority (90%) of entrepreneurs are starting-up their business ventures either partially or wholly on an off-the-books basis. Such entrepreneurs, in consequence, cannot be depicted as some small segment of the totality of entrepreneurs existing in the margins. They are the "mainstream" of total entrepreneurial activity and it is legitimate entrepreneurs who inhabit the margins. If entrepreneurship is to be understood in Ukraine, then it is little use adhering to the more wholesome and virtuous textbook representation of entrepreneurs as legitimate super-heroes and focusing upon solely this group since they are only a small minority of all entrepreneurs. Conclusions The starting point of this paper was that much of the entrepreneurship literature errs towards representing entrepreneurs first, in a positive and virtuous manner, and second, in a clean and sanitized way. The problem, however, is that there seems to be marked discrepancy between such textbook celebratory odes to the entrepreneur as wholesome super heroes and the lived realities of entrepreneurship. In this paper this has been shown by highlighting how many entrepreneurs work on an off-the-books basis. Until now, and despite the common representation of entrepreneurs as risk-taking heroes, it has been seldom if ever questioned whether this means that they always keep to the rules. Notable by its absence from most literature on entrepreneurship, that is, is the notion that risk-takers might weigh up the probability of being caught and the level of punishments and decide to do some or all of their business on an off-the-books basis. Reported the results of one of the first known surveys to identify the proportion of businesses that start-up in the off-the-books economy, this paper has revealed that in Ukraine during 2005-06, just 10% of those who had started up business ventures in the past three years were operating on a wholly legitimate basis, 39% had a license to trade as self-employed and/or had registered their businesses but were conducting a portion of their trade in the off-the-books economy while the majority (51%) operated wholly unregistered off-the-books enterprises and/or did not have a license to trade as self-employed and conducted all of their trade on an off-the-books basis. Here, in consequence, the depiction of enterprise culture as composed of super-hero entrepreneurs playing by the rulebook in their business lives is transcended. Although there may be a gleaming "whiter-than-white" textbook depiction of entrepreneurship, this is here asserted to represent but the tip of the iceberg and beneath the surface, so far largely ignored, exists a large hidden enterprise culture composed of entrepreneurs who do not always play within the bounds of the law. By shining a light on this hidden enterprise culture beneath the waterline, the aim has been to begin to tarnish the sanitized and clean representation of entrepreneurship by revealing the everyday lived realities. Of course, not all entrepreneurs engage in illegitimate off-the-books transactions and it is not the intention here to say that they do. Denoting entrepreneurs as always breaking the rules is as erroneous as asserting that they are always virtuous and follow the letter of the law. The point is that some of these so-called "super-heroes" are not perhaps as clean-cut and above board as is asserted in text-book depictions. This finding has major implications for public policy. Until now, a common tendency especially in East-Central Europe has been to seek to eradicate the off-the-books economy by increasing the actual or perceived likelihood of detection and the level of penalties for those caught. However, this paper has revealed that if governments pursue such a policy of eradication, they will with one hand be stamping out precisely the enterprise culture that with another hand they are so desperately seeking to foster. To resolve this, governments need to perhaps concentrate on facilitating the legitimization of such off-the-books enterprises rather than simply seek to eradicate them. This requires a shift in public policy away from the current punitive deterrence approach and towards a more enabling approach that seeks to help off-the-books enterprise move into the legitimate economy. Measures that might be used include regulatory and tax simplification initiatives, the provision of business advice and support on how to put their affairs in order, amnesties for off-the-books enterprises making a voluntary disclosure of their past tax evasion activities, as well as broader awareness raising campaigns and education on the benefits of tax compliance (see Williams, 2006). If pursued, then the current discrepancies and contradictions in public policy towards entrepreneurship and the off-the-books economy would be overcome. Of course, whether it is the case in other countries that business ventures often startup off-the-books, and the degree to which this is the case, now needs to be investigated. This study of Ukraine pinpoints a potentially important facet of entrepreneurship that has been so far subject to little empirical investigation. It is perhaps time therefore that further research was conducted to evaluate the proportion of business start-ups in other countries that are wholly legitimate ventures, the share that are registered enterprises conducting a portion of their trade off-the-books and the percentage that are wholly unregistered enterprises conducting all of their trade on an off-the-books basis. If this paper stimulates such research and encourages greater consideration of the lived realities of entrepreneurship so as to transcend the virtuous ideal-type of the entrepreneur, then it will have achieved its objective. Acknowledgements This paper arises out of a project entitled "Surviving post-socialism: evaluating the role of the informal sector in Ukraine," funded by the UK's Economic and Social Research Council (Grant No. RES000220985). 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Table 1. Primary and second most important form of work for living
standard: % of households
Secondary strategy
Unpaid
Self-provisioning mutual aid
Primary Self-provisioning 0.9 1.7
strategy
Mutual aid 0.2 0.9
Off-the-books 3.4 4.1
work
Formal job 10.3 17.5
Pension/Benefits 2.9 4.1
Secondary strategy
Off-the-books Formal
work job
Primary Self-provisioning 2.2 2.4
strategy
Mutual aid 1.0 1.4
Off-the-books 1.5 6.0
work
Formal job 18.4 9.5
Pension/Benefits 1.4 0.5
Secondary strategy
Benefits All
Primary Self-provisioning 0.5 7.7
strategy
Mutual aid 1.0 4.5
Off-the-books 1.4 16.4
work
Formal job 5.7 61.4
Pension/Benefits 1.0 9.9
Source: 2005-06 Ukraine survey.
Table 2. Primary sphere relied on by Ukraine households, 2005-06:
by type of household
Primary strategy
Unpaid mutual Off-the-books
% Self-provisioning aid work
Employment status of household
Multiple earner 4.7 1.5 13.9
Single earner 8.4 4.8 23.5
No earner-working 37.5 18.8 12.5
age
No-earner-retired 5.4 3.6 5.4
Gross Household Income/month (gr)
<600 9.6 4.1 15.1
600-1399 6.7 3.3 13.4
1400-2199 6.6 4.1 17.3
2200-2999 3.4 1.7 18.6
3000-3799 10.2 2.6 15.4
3800+ 4.5 0 22.7
Primary strategy
Formal Pension/
% employment benefits
Employment status of household
Multiple earner 78.6 1.1
Single earner 56.0 7.2
No earner-working 18.8 12.5
age
No-earner-retired 10.7 75.0
Gross Household Income/month (gr)
<600 41.1 30.1
600-1399 61.9 14.6
1400-2199 71.1 0.8
2200-2999 73.3 1.7
3000-3799 69.2 2.6
3800+ 72.7 0
Source: 2005-06 Ukraine Survey.
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