success. ‘Soft’ criteria such as the personality of the entrepreneurs, their social and professional background and their motivation for setting up a business or going into self-employment and remaining there play an important role in determining survival and success (Storey 1994). Thus, both criteria take a subjective and individual meaning depending on personal success indicators such as the personal satisfaction of the entrepreneur with his or her professional and economic situation. The increasing labour flexibility adds another dimension, in that, self-employment and entrepreneurship is more likely to become restricted periods in a professional lifetime (Sennett 1998). In other words, survival and success mirror a variety of situations and motives. Despite economic growth, survival and success then stand for a supplementary income, for example, in the case of part-time or low-income Entrepreneurship. Survival and success furthermore could also mean the realization of a personal dream without necessarily being connected to the economic development of the business. In short: different types of entrepreneurial activities and self-employment emphasize different aims, reflecting the variety of micro enterprises as there are: traditional craft businesses, potential gazelles in emerging branches side by side with part-time and/or low-income activities or life-style companies. Society, culture, politics and economics form a potential entrepreneur's behavior and decisions in a direct way because they determine the relevant framework for actions and thus business survival and success. Furthermore, this macro environment also exercises indirect influence by determining the microenvironment, which consists of the origin and the milieu of a (potential) entrepreneur. A number of characteristics have been researched over the past years with respect to their influence on entry into self-employment, survival and success. Social or fami...
