Making that Which is Old New Again: Entrepreneurial Bricolage

Abstract

Most entrepreneurs undertake their businesses with very limited resources. Yet some entrepreneurs manage to survive or even to create robust and growing firms despite long periods with what appear initially as inadequate resources. We wondered what kinds or patterns of behavior might account for the ability of some entrepreneurial firms to make do or to flourish with the resources they have at hand. Levi-Strauss defined bricolage as "making do with whatever is at hand." This paper develops a grounded theory of entrepreneurial bricolage based on several years of comparative ethnographic research among entrepreneurs and employees in two very different highly resource-constrained contexts. The results have a series of important implications for both organization theories and entrepreneurial practice, touching on the possibilities of firm growth and employee resourcefulness under resource constraints.

Keywords: Entrepreneurial

JEL Classification: M13