Entrepreneurial Bricolage: How Small Family Businesses in Nigeria'Make Do' with Limited Resources

With high failure rates of small businesses in Africa, ‘making do’ or showing resourcefulness with scarce and limited resources in order to survive ought to be a major characteristic of high performing organisations. So... [ view full abstract ]

With high failure rates of small businesses in Africa, ‘making do’ or showing resourcefulness with scarce and limited resources in order to survive ought to be a major characteristic of high performing organisations. So far, our understanding of how small businesses in Africa show resourcefulness in navigating very difficult economic and institutional terrains has been understudied hence the purpose of this paper. A sample of ten well established small family businesses in Nigeria were understudied using in-depth, structured interviews. We found that Lévi-Strauss’s concept of bricolage—making do with what is at hand—explained many of the behaviours we observed in the small family businesses. Our findings uncovered the critical role knowledge and skills played in the successful harnessing of existing resources and proposes that knowledge-driven bricolage behaviour is the way forward in building high-performing small businesses in Africa.