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Social entrepreneurship is primarily concerned with the development of innovative solutions to society's most challenging problems. Since social entrepreneurship flourishes in resource-constrained environments, social innovation may depend on the extent to which social entrepreneurs can combine and apply the resources at hand in creative and useful ways to solve problems – “bricolage.” Moreover, innovating for social impact relies on a set of institutional and structural supports – “innovation ecology,' which can facilitate or impede innovation. Our research empirically examines these variables as drivers of systemic social change through scaling and replication – “catalytic innovation” (i.e., the development of products and services targeted to unserved markets). Results of a survey conducted with 113 social entrepreneurs indicate that, while innovation ecology is associated with the degree of catalytic innovation, it is mediated by the role and degree of bricolage that social entrepreneurs bring to solving problems. These findings reinforce the role of entrepreneurs as the indispensable agents of social change.

The last two decades have witnessed a surge of interest in social entrepreneurship organizations (SEOs). Understanding their business models is crucial for sustaining their long-term growth. This paper analyses how SEOs that use the approach of social bricolage adapt their business model to develop social innovation.

This study used in-depth multiple comparative case studies and narrative analysis to focus on the South of Italy, where these ventures play a crucial role in the entrepreneurial process of minor and abandoned cultural heritage sites, generating economic and social value and employment opportunities.

By developing a conceptual framework, this paper enhances current understanding of the social dimensions of SEOs’ business model. These ventures using the approach of social bricolage can produce social innovation, reinventing and innovating their business model. The business model innovation of the cases revealed a strong social mark and identified peculiar strategies that both respond to social needs and long-term sustainability in complex contexts.

This study connects previous knowledge on social bricolage with the business model innovation, highlighting routines and processes used by ventures, and provides a starting point for social entrepreneurs and innovators in the complex and often uncertain cultural domain of the Third Sector in Italy.

The paper aims to contribute to the literature on SEOs by exploring their main features and social dimensions. By combining social bricolage and business model innovation, it offers a novel conceptual framework for developing social innovation and for the study of SEOs.

The paper aims to understand how resource constraints are addressed in the development of a marketing strategy by a social enterprise.

The authors have used an in-depth case study of collaboration between a Finnish university and an Indian social enterprise as the methodology for the research in which the data were collected over a period of two years. The data involve semi-structured interviews, field notes and student reports.

The authors propose bricolage as a method of marketing ingenuity in resource-constrained social enterprises. Network bricolage and entrepreneurship education bricolage were identified as two mechanisms adopted to address resource constraints in the early stage of the development of a social enterprise. Further studies need to be conducted to test the applicability of network bricolage among a variety of small and medium-sized enterprises and start-ups. Bricolage could be explored in more detail as an alternative to resource leveraging to understand the marketing activities of social businesses in their initial stages.

Network bricolage is a type of bricolage in which an entrepreneur utilizes existing personal and professional networks as a resource at hand. Although networking and resource leveraging imply that the founders of an organization pursue resources from previously unknown people, network bricolage involves already known contacts of the entrepreneur.

Another type of bricolage that observed by the authors was entrepreneurship education bricolage. A combination of students, business mentors and university resources such as faculty members was utilized as an ingenuity mechanism to develop creative solutions for a shortage of marketing resources.

The theoretical framework of entrepreneurial bricolage is applied in the context of the marketing of a social enterprise.

Although scholars have investigated how social entrepreneurs create and develop social enterprises in the penurious stable environment, how they are created in the penurious unstable environment has yet been overlooked. The purpose of this paper is to address this research gap by exploring how internally displaced individuals, despite the lack of resources, create and develop a social enterprise to serve the other displaced population in the war and conflict zones.

Underpinned by a biographical research design, in-depth interviews with internally displaced individuals who have created social enterprises in the war and conflict zones were undertaken. Three social entrepreneurs were chosen for this study from three different social enterprises that are created by internally displaced individuals to serve the other internally displaced people of three different countries, namely, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Syria.

The single and cross-case analysis found that internally displaced individuals deploy bricolage strategy, for example, reconfiguration of pre-existing resources and competencies (both internal and external), to start up a social venture in the war and conflict zones. They utilise pre-existing internal resources, mainly human capital, and external resources, through a frugal approach towards resources acquisitions. The authors also found that the displaced social entrepreneurs utilise resources of other displaced individuals, for example, networks, volunteers, local knowledge and financial supports mainly from older arrivals, and develop their own enterprise ecosystem within the host location to co-create and co-develop social enterprise and social values for all of them.

The findings show that internally displaced individuals utilise bricolage strategies to create and develop socially entrepreneurial venture to serve other internally displaced individuals in the war and conflict zones. As the findings are based on three case studies, for confirmatory approach, a quantitative study with a large sample size is necessary. Furthermore, as the differences in economic, cultural and linguistic in between the home and host locations can have impact on the creation and the development of a social venture, they should be considered in the future studies.

This study contributes to the limited literature and studies on social entrepreneurship, specifically, to the context of unstable penurious environment. It also contributes to the literature on bricolage by extending its application from penurious stable environment to the penurious unstable environment. By exploring what and how internal and external resources are utilised to create and develop a socially entrepreneurial venture in a war and conflict zones, this study has added value to the literature on not only bricolage but also entrepreneurship in war and conflict zones.

Achieving project performance goals in extremely resource-constrained environments, such as those of social enterprises, is challenging. These organizations often employ bricolage – making the most of available resources – to navigate challenging landscapes. This study aims to understand how bricolage capabilities enhance or attenuate organizational project outcomes in resource-constrained social enterprises.

An exploratory survey was conducted to understand project management practices in Canadian social enterprises. Established scales were used to measure constructs with confirmatory factor analysis, and linear regression was employed to analyze relationships.

The study provides empirical evidence of the positive influence of bricolage on organizational project performance, with a crossover interaction observed for moderators – entrepreneurial leadership and project management capabilities. While project capabilities strengthen the positive impact of bricolage capabilities on project performance, entrepreneurial leadership has the opposite effect.

The insights from this study offer an initial roadmap for project managers for effective resource acquisition and utilization through bricolage, ultimately enhancing project management effectiveness in resource-constrained environments.

Despite the crucial role of bricolage capabilities in resource-constrained environments, the project management literature has largely neglected this concept. It is unclear how organizations use bricolage to manage projects. This lack of understanding challenges organizations, hindering their ability to apply bricolage consistently and thoughtfully in managing projects. Our study provides a deeper understanding of how bricolage facilitates project performance and enriches our understanding of it as an effective resource mobilization strategy within social enterprises.

Social enterprises (SEs) are increasingly expected to rely on formal methodologies to assess their social impact. These structured methodologies, which produce objective and evidence-based measures of impact, are sometimes opposed to bricolage approaches that “make do” with what is at hand. This paper aims to question this distinction by identifying the conflicting considerations that arise in the process of implementing a formal methodology, which might lead SEs to rely on bricolage mechanisms. The authors propose a model of “formally-driven” bricolage with core principles to navigate between those considerations.

Adopting an inductive approach, the authors draw on the in-depth case study of a work integration SE engaged in a formal social impact assessment (SIA) through collaborative research.

First, the authors identify five types of considerations (feasibility, efficiency, ethics, legitimacy and aim) that come into tension with the primary considerations of formality in formal methodologies, leading SEs to still rely on bricolage mechanisms. Second, the authors identify five principles (multidimensional, participative, cultural, mixed-method and adaptive) that permit navigation between those conflicting considerations. Based on the findings, the authors develop a model of “formally-driven” bricolage.

The contribution is methodological, theoretical and practical. The authors bridge the gap between theory and practice through long-term immersion in an SE. The authors contribute to the understanding of the use of bricolage in SIA by investigating why and how bricolage is still at play in formal assessments. The proposed model of “formally-driven” bricolage can help researchers and practitioners to better grasp the ins and outs of the SIA process.

This study proposes personal network of social entrepreneurs as a key antecedent factor of their resource bricolage to understand the mechanisms underlying social entrepreneurial practices before the founding of social enterprises.

An empirical study is used to collect and analyze data. The questionnaire data are drawn from in-depth semistructured interviews with Chinese social entrepreneurs. This study develops a theoretical framework that draws upon two dimensions of social capital, namely, “ownership” and “use,” to explore relationships among personal network, resource bricolage and relation strength.

With data from 227 social enterprises in China, empirical results suggest that personal network of social entrepreneurs, that is, the “owned” social capital, shall be transformed by the intermediate role of resource bricolage into relation strength, that is, the “used” social capital. The relationship between resource bricolage and relation strength is positively moderated by the marketization degree and social class of social entrepreneurs.

This study introduces resource bricolage into the front-end course of social entrepreneurship. The results show that similar personal network can lead to different behavioral outcomes in the context of social entrepreneurship. Then the integration of resources and opportunities at the beginning of the social entrepreneurial process opens new avenues for future research. However, this study only investigates the transformation from network to resources implemented by social entrepreneurs before organization establishment. It does not explore potential outcomes of such a transformation for the development of social enterprises.

Social entrepreneurs at the prefounding stage shall make use of the values of available resources, fully use potential interpersonal relations in the personal network, and transform these relations into a close, steady relationship to realize potential values of available resources. Social entrepreneurs can start from excavation and foundation laying of strong relation networks, to avoid problems in legality, social awareness and failure risks generated from blind integration of external resources.

This study finds that social entrepreneurship exists between the motivation of the social entrepreneur and the establishment of the organization after the development over time. Creating first a phased result through the resource bricolage is necessary. This result establishes a complete process chain of social entrepreneurship from motivation to behavior, next to organization establishment and subsequent development. This study is an empirical test based on the theoretical interpretation to make a positive effect on the social entrepreneurship research in the theoretical construction and testing of the deficiencies.

The purpose of this paper is to explore bricolage as the missing link in understanding how cross-sector social partnerships form and operate in response to grand challenges. It is proposed that the weaving together of resources employed by members of cross-sector social partnerships (CSSPs) is bricolage in action and can be linked to Gray's (1985) facilitating conditions for collaboration. While existing research examines bricolage primarily at the individual level, this research studies collective bricolage, as implemented by a cross-sector social partnership in its process to address a grand challenge.

The authors follow the evolution of a Midwestern initiative aimed at the grand challenge of generational poverty. The deductive case study approach identifies the mechanisms of bricolage being employed in the initiative's evolution and ties these to Gray's (1985) seminal paper on interorganizational collaboration.

This case study has implications for academics conceptually struggling to understand grand challenges and the role of entrepreneurial initiatives in the public and nonprofit sectors, as well as practitioners currently involved in collaborative efforts to address said challenges.

This study enriches the discussion and enhances the link between the CSSP literature and new notions of social entrepreneurship that embrace the collective as their unit of analysis. This is the first work of its kind to link bricolage to a nascent CSSP and demonstrate how the entrepreneurial concept of bricolage is an inherent part of CSSP formation and operation.

This paper aims to analyse how social entrepreneurship organizations that use approach of social bricolage adapt their business model to develop social innovation. The past decade has witnessed a surge of research interest in social entrepreneurship organizations (SEOs). This has resulted in important insights concerning their role in fostering social challenges. The crisis of both public and private profit-driven models meet the arising of new initiatives designed to meet the minor and often abandoned cultural heritage consumption need. Drawing on the domain of SEOs and social bricolage framework, these initiatives are able to pursue the social and the economic mission together and to produce social innovation.

This paper aims to analyze how SEOs that use strategies of social bricolage can improve the development and diffusion of social innovation. Employing in-depth multiple comparative case studies of 15 cultural SEOs in the South of Italy, through the analysis of semi-structured interview, the study enhance current understanding of the social dimension of SEOs.

First results show that SEOs in the domain of minor cultural heritage adopt an innovative business model and in particular a social business model unraveling organizational dimensions falling into the social bricolage. The relation between social bricolage dimensions and social business model criteria produces outcomes in which social innovation can be expressed.

This study enhances current understanding of the social dimensions of business model involved in social innovation production of cultural SEOs. This research aims to be a benchmark of the social innovation initiatives in the field of minor cultural heritage management.

Resource mobilization has come to dominate contemporary discourse on the making and survival of social enterprises (SEs). Emphasizing the socially constructed nature of idiosyncratic firm resource environments, this study integrates bricolage and social exchange theory to explore the means at hand and the kinds of practices SEs in China employ to mobilize resources to address persistent social problems.

Adopting a qualitative multiple case design, the research contribution is developed in the context of four SEs based in two cities in China selected through a two-stage process. The main data for the inquiry come from 21 face-to-face, semi-structured interviews conducted with key informants in 2018 and 2019. The authors supplemented this with secondary data about each SE curated from social media platforms and publicly available documentary sources, including press statements, reports and popular press video interviews.

The research findings suggest that SEs in China tend to follow a two-step resource mobilization process: fraternize and exchange. Leveraging the means at hand – “social practice know-how” and the practice of “proactiveness,” SEs strategically engage with actors in their environment (fraternize) to understand and explore the possible sources of the resources they require. Nevertheless, fraternization alone is not sufficient; SEs must demonstrate exchange values (social, economic, functional and regulatory) to convince resource owners to either directly release resources (funds, the right of use of empty spaces, technologies, time and efforts) or offer them indirect support (certification, government procurement). The process of fraternizing within the contingencies of organizing, intertwined with social exchange practices, constitutes the success of resource mobilization. The combination and reconfiguration of the expanded repertoire of mobilized resources provide opportunities for the SEs to make do and, in return, help them maintain their status as valued SEs in China.

This study extends the understanding of bricolage through a social exchange lens to unpack the process through which SEs in China mobilize appropriate resources for their businesses. Emphasizing the importance of the social dimension of bricolage in resource mobilization, a two-step model, comprising fraternization exhibited in the form of social practice know-how and proactiveness and social exchange, is presented as an essential mechanism in SEs’ resource mobilization in China.