Workers represented by the trade unions in Europe are government workers and, to a lesser extent, the workers of large enterprises. SMEs as the Unknown Stakeholder investigates how and to what extent the self-employed and micro-enterprise workers can be represented in the social arena. Strong because of their accountability and subject to competition, self-employed and micro-enterprise workers can leverage vis-a-vis the rest of society to gain leadership and a larger share of the resources that are being diverted from productive sectors to bureaucratic sectors. The authors highlight the need to go beyond this culture and separate the useful from the beautiful, and put forward the suggestion that micro-enterprise and SME representatives should add new scopes to their way of representing their workers.

Investigates how and to what extent the self-employed and micro-enterprise workers can be represented in the social arena. A cross-sector approach to responsibility for government as well as private businesses.