Craft Entrepreneurship During a Disruptive Global Pandemic Crisis: An Ethnography of Craft Breweries in Berlin

Abstract

AbstractThe study explores how cultural entrepreneurs in the craft beer sector in Berlin experienced and adapted their businesses to the disruptive crisis environment in the initial phase of the global pandemic in 2020. It is argued that contextualizing entrepreneurship practices and processes helps understand the role of the cultural context in determining the nature of entrepreneurial activity and coping strategies they employ to withstand a crisis. Ethnographic research method is employed to analyse the ways in which craft breweries responded to an unfolding crisis and assess the impact of the pandemic on these emerging small businesses. This approach emphasizes the importance of studying craft entrepreneurs in their cultural settings to understand how and why they responded to the crisis the way they did and what their accounts may mean for the future of the craft beer sector, crisis management and craft entrepreneurship. The findings of the study suggest that entrepreneurs in the craft beer sector draw on context and adopt the bricoleurs role by utilizing resources at hand to respond and adjust to the unfolding crisis.KeywordsCraft entrepreneurshipCovid- 19 pandemicEthnographyCraft breweriesBerlin