Unfolding Bricolage in Social Entrepreneurship: A Way Forward for Future Research

Abstract

Social entrepreneurship has been recently becoming center of attention for academicians and practitioners. It is mainly because of its critical role in addressing unmet needs and social problems of underprivileged communities around the globe. Social entrepreneurs are often confronted with the scarcity of resources as they are inherently located in resource constrained settings. Given the scarcity of resources and the crucial role of social entrepreneurship, bricolage is emerging as a promising strategy to address resource scarcity in impoverished settings. In this vein, this paper provides a comprehensive review of literature on bricolage and how it unfolds in social entrepreneurship. The review also sheds light on the conceptual evolution of bricolage and how it invades the entrepreneurship literature. A systematic approach was adopted for conducting the literature search in order to capture all the recent work on bricolage in context of social entrepreneurship. The review shows that most of the studies on bricolage in context of social entrepreneurship are concentrated in developed countries and more stable environments with only few exceptions. Also social bricolage theory which is an extension of entrepreneurial bricolage is still understudied and needs further investigation and documentation. The paper holds particular relevance for academicians and researchers as it provides useful insights into concepts of bricolage and its relevance to social entrepreneurship. Keywords: Entrepreneurship, Bricolage, Social Entrepreneurship, Social Bricolage.