Entrepreneurial bricolage and resilience: surviving and thriving of micro and small businesses
Entrepreneurial bricolage and resilience: surviving and thriving of micro and small businesses

Summary/Abstract: Empirical research on the impact of entrepreneurial bricolage on business performance remains insufficiently grounded and often yields non-straightforward results. The objective of this study is to investigate how entrepreneurial bricolage relates to business performance, both directly and indirectly through entrepreneurial resilience. Structured survey data were collected from 640 owners and founders of micro and small businesses in the Republic of Croatia. PLS-SEM was used to examine the interplay among entrepreneurial bricolage, resilience and business performance. The results indicate a significant and positive relationship between entrepreneurial bricolage, business performance, and entrepreneurial resilience, as well as a significant and positive relationship between entrepreneurial resilience and business performance. Specifically, the results show that entrepreneurial resilience partially mediates the relationship between entrepreneurial bricolage and business performance. In addition, the study also shows a high predictive power of the analysed model, which confirms the generalizability of the findings and provides novel evidence that entrepreneurial bricolage not only supports problem-solving behavior but also enhances the capacity to effectively respond to changing circumstances, acting as a form of "pragmatic resilience". This contributes to the literature by offering a new theoretical lens on how entrepreneurial bricolage generates sustained competitiveness in micro and small enterprises and points to the broader need for future investigation of bricolage's role in fostering resilience, entrepreneurship and crisis management. Future research should further explore the boundary conditions of the entrepreneurial bricolage-resilience-performance relationship, particularly across different stages of firm development and in more diverse entrepreneurial ecosystems.

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