Home-Based Business: Setting Straight the Urban Myth

Home-based businesses make up the largest cohort of Australian businesses yet there has been little dedicated empirical research conducted into this group, as they have either been ignored as a discrete group or subsumed into the generic grouping of small business. A major reason for this lack of research is because home-based businesses have often been assumed to be hobby or artisan types of businesses, operated in an ad hoc part-time basis, mainly by women and often out of the metropolitan area, thus not conforming to mainstream business. The inference which can be made from these assumptions is that home-based business are not 'legitimate' or real businesses. The purpose of this paper is to present the results of a recent study into home-based businesses, which refute most of the assumptions and provide evidence that most home-based businesses are legitimate business operations. In addition home-based businesses are shown to be generators of real employment and that they also make a significant economic and social contribution to their local community.