Entrepreneurial bricolage in the aftermath of a shock. Insights from Greek SMEs

Abstract

The world has seen several waves of economic crises, which have had a severe impact on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), such as the Great Depression of the 1930s, the financial crisis in the late 2000s and, most recently, the global COVID-19, because they strip SMEs from their much needed resources. Prior research suggests that SMEs use bricolage to cope with such negative external shocks. While there is a rich discussion on how SMEs carry out their bricolage processes, the literature provides little empirical evidence on what actually happens in times of crisis. To examine whether the SME bricolage process described in the literature is consistent with how SMEs use bricolage when they face a business environment crisis, we conducted a qualitative study of six SMEs’ response to the austerity measures of the bailout programme for Greece, scheduled by the EU, ECB and IMF, which were known to have unambiguously led to the deterioration of the SME business environment. We found that bricolage occurred across all SMEs’ activities as expected. However, contrary to the literature, we found that bricolage did not lead the strategic approach of any of the investigated SMEs. Rather, bricolage was integrated within their overall strategy. Furthermore, we found that how the bricolage is unrolled depends on the SME sector. With this knowledge, the present study suggests policymakers need to adjust their support system towards enabling resource-constrained SMEs to deal with the aftermath of negative shocks in their business environment.