Bricolage in the marketing efforts of a social enterprise

Abstract

Structured AbstractPurpose -The article aims to understand how resource constraints are addressed in the development of a marketing strategy by a social enterprise.Methodology -The authors have used an in-depth case study of collaboration between a Finnish university and an Indian social enterprise as the methodology for our research in which the data were collected over a period of two years. The data involve semi-structured interviews, field notes and student reports.Findings -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.Research limitations/ implications -Network bricolage is a type of bricolage in which an entrepreneur utilizes existing personal and professional networks as a resource at hand. Whereas 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. 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.Practical implications -Another type of bricolage that the authors observed 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.Originality/value -The theoretical framework of entrepreneurial bricolage is applied in the context of the marketing of a social enterprise.

Sources of expertise in social enterprises

“…Desa (2012) suggests that, in the face of resource constraints and sometimes penurious environments, social entrepreneurs are adept at mobilizing resources like the enterprising bricoleurs first described by Levi-Straus (1966), by making do with materials and pre-existing resources to achieve their goals. This observation was confirmed by the work of Kannampuzha and Suoranta (2016), whose case study of a health venture in rural India described entrepreneurs drawing upon an existing collaboration with a university for professional and personal contacts to "shatter" resource constraints. Although the study concentrates on the early stages of a social enterprise, utilizes only one example as its basis, and concentrates on existing sources, it offers a valuable insight into the mechanisms employed and the central role of networks in social enterprises.…”

Entrepreneurial Marketing Theory: Current Developments and Future Research Agenda

“…Multiple case study Andersson et al, 2018;Pitchayadol et al, 2018;Toghraee et al, 2017;Weerawardena et al, 2017;Yang & Gabrielsson 2017;Renton, et al, 2015;Franco et al, 2014;Hallbäck & Gabrielsson 2013;Özdemir 2013;Bettiol et al, 2012;Mort et al, 2012;Szabo et al, 2011;Phua & Jones 2010;Schmengler & Kraus 2010;Jones & Rowley 2009;Moriarty et al, 2008;Perks & Shukla 2008 Single case study Crick et al, 2018;Fillis et al, 2017;Dalecki 2016;Kannampuzha & Suoranta 2016;Lewis et al, 2014;Lehman et al, 2014;Thomas et al, 2013;Meyers & Harmeling 2011;Gaddefors & Anderson 2009 Simple qualitative (without specifying design/method)…”

“…The context in which EM has been investigated, varies from one study to another depending on the gaps the authors have found in the literature and contributed to cover that, and type of problems and businesses. It has been found that all the studies have investigated the businesses which were well established and present at least from few years except two studies (i.e., Kannampuzha & Suoranta 2016;and Meyers & Harmeling 2011) which have investigated the business start-up phase. Another key finding of this review is, most of the studies were focusing on success factors and marketing activities of successful businesses, but no study in the review is investigating the factors of failure or problems and challenges (e.g., Amjad et al, 2020) faced by the entrepreneurs during the journey of achieving that success.…”

“…For such business failures, marketing is a dominant reason and its seen as one of the greatest problems faced by SMEs during the start-up phase (Harrigan et al, 2012;Mitchell et al, 2015;Nikolić et al, 2019), but simultaneously one of the most important activities for their growth and survival (Franco et al, 2014). In the current review, only two studies have explored the start-up phases of businesses (i.e., Kannampuzha & Suoranta 2016;and, Mayers & Hammerling 2009), whereas, remaining all papers have studied EM in the firms that were already well established from at least a few years. Therefore, due to very limited attention so far on the business start-up phase, particularly at the EM challenges during the start-up, there is a need to investigate various types of EM challenges faced by the entrepreneurs during the start-up phase of the business, so the problems of business failure and unemployment rate could be addressed.…”

From social activism to active socialization: The evolution of football ideology in community‐owned football clubs

“…The SE is categorized by a plethora of business models (Bull, 2018) and is an ever‐expanding, ever‐developing, and “increasingly popular intervention” (Weaver, 2016, p. 4) that focuses on social value creation (Kannampuzha & Suoranta, 2016). SE focuses on local needs rather than on the “centralized assumptions of large institutions” (Seelos & Mair, 2005, p. 243), combining social and financial concerns as a symbiotic relationship representative of a business hybrid (Bradford, Luke, & Furneaux, 2018) in which profit is utilized to ameliorate, negate, and eradicate social ills.…”