Creating Something from Nothing: Resource Construction through Entrepreneurial Bricolage

TLDR

The study demonstrates that resource environments are socially constructed and that bricolage is central to this construction. By conducting a field study of 29 resource‑constrained firms, the authors define entrepreneurial bricolage and outline a process model showing how entrepreneurs recombine available elements to create unique services that challenge institutional limits. The findings reveal that bricolage explains firms’ ability to create from nothing by exploiting overlooked inputs, that such firms reject dominant resource limits, and that a constructivist view of resource environments is more fruitful than an objectivist one.

Abstract

A field study of 29 resource-constrained firms that varied dramatically in their responses to similar objective environments is used to examine the process by which entrepreneurs in resource-poor environments were able to render unique services by recombining elements at hand for new purposes that challenged institutional definitions and limits. We found that Lévi-Strauss's concept of bricolage—making do with what is at hand—explained many of the behaviors we observed in small firms that were able to create something from nothing by exploiting physical, social, or institutional inputs that other firms rejected or ignored. We demonstrate the socially constructed nature of resource environments and the role of bricolage in this construction. Using our field data and the existing literature on bricolage, we advance a formal definition of entrepreneurial bricolage and induce the beginnings of a process model of bricolage and firm growth. Central to our contribution is the notion that companies engaging in bricolage refuse to enact the limitations imposed by dominant definitions of resource environments, suggesting that, for understanding entrepreneurial behavior, a constructivist approach to resource environments is more fruitful than objectivist views.