Abstract
Self-employed individuals constitute a large and growing segment of the U.S. workforce, but they have been virtually ignored by organizational researchers. In this study, it was hypothesized that self-employed individuals, because of greater physical, emotional, and financial investment in their jobs, would report higher levels of organizational commitment, job involvement, and work salience than would individuals employed by organizations. It was also hypothesized that there would be a stronger relationship between job, life, family, and self-satisfaction for self-employed individuals. LISREL, MANCOVA, ANCOVA, and planned comparisons were used to analyze the data from a sample of 62 self- and 115 organizationally employed male college graduates; the first hypothesis received partial support and the second hypothesis was fully supported. Implications and directions for future research are briefly discussed.
