Bricolage and growth in social entrepreneurship organisations

Abstract

This paper explores the role of bricolage in the growth of social entrepreneurship organisations (SEOs). Building on the premises that (1) bricolage is based on the resources at hand and the subjective perspectives that individuals have of these resources, and (2) the characteristics of the top management team (TMT) are an indicator of the resources they make available to the organisation and their ability to put different perspectives into play to interpret resource environments, we seek to determine which configurations of resource endowment, autonomy in the use of resources, TMT diversity and bricolage promote organisational growth. Using a fuzzy-set theoretical technique (fsQCA), we show that the effect of bricolage on organisational growth is contingent on the availability of resources, the degree of autonomy in using these resources and TMT diversity in organisational tenure. Our findings also indicate that TMT gender diversity is not a relevant condition to the growth of SEOs that use bricolage and that TMTs incorporating members with differing levels of previous experience in for-profit organisations exert a negative impact on organisational growth.