Doing more with less, systematically? Bricolage and ingenieuring in successful social ventures

Chamu Sunduramurthy, Congcong Zheng, Martina Musteen, John Francis and Lawrence Rhyne

Journal of World Business, 2016, vol. 51, issue 5, 855-870

Abstract: This study investigates whether and how bricolage- and ingenieuring-type of approaches are used in successful social ventures in the learning/education sector across three different contexts (Brazil, South Africa and the US). We employ a partially grounded theory approach to examine the profiles of Ashoka fellows and find that despite the vast differences in their local environments, successful social entrepreneurs engage in similar bricolage processes in three domains of value creation: they tend to refuse limitations imposed by the environment, utilize resources in new and innovative ways, and engage a wide range of stakeholders as partners. Additionally, successful social entrepreneurs avoid just “making do”; instead, they rely on ingenieur-type of approach in their operational process to create and establish replicable systems to fulfil their social vision. We discuss the remarkable consistency in the approaches utilized by successful social entrepreneurs across the three countries from the perspective of theory and practice.

Keywords: Bricolage; Social ventures; Social entrepreneurship; Learning/education sector (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (21)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1090951616300487
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:worbus:v:51:y:2016:i:5:p:855-870

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/620401/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... 620401/bibliographic

DOI: 10.1016/j.jwb.2016.06.005

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of World Business is currently edited by David Collings and Jonathan Doh

More articles in Journal of World Business from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().