How Bricoleurs Go International: A European Study about the Moderating Role of Governmental Programs

Abstract

Research increasingly suggests that innovativeness and internationalization are two intertwined pathways to growth for entrepreneurial ventures. However, both ways are resource intensive and therefore challenging. This is why theory points to the emerging concept of entrepreneurial bricolage to explain how resourceful behaviour helps entrepreneurial ventures to thrive despite facing the challenges associated with growth. In another research stream, recent studies have investigated the effectiveness of governmental entrepreneurship support programs (GESPs) for growth. By using a unique dataset of 681 European entrepreneurial ventures, we emphasize a moderated-mediation model including entrepreneurial bricolage, product/service innovativeness, the degree of internationalization, and GESPs. Specifically, our results show that entrepreneurial bricolage is an important means for entrepreneurial ventures that are targeting foreign markets as it nurtures product/service innovativeness and thereby enhances a venture’s degree of internationalization. Our findings emphasise that GESPs do not affect the link between bricolage and innovativeness but do influence how innovativeness translates into greater degrees of internationalization. Implications for both theory and practice are discussed.