Bricolage and Social Entrepreneurship to Address Emergent Social Needs: A “Deconstructionist” Perspective

Social entrepreneurship is one of the most discussed issues in recent management literature. In particular, social entrepreneurship has recently gained the attention of management scholars interested in understanding its sociological and anthropological aspects. This paper focuses on Claude Lévi-Strauss’s notion of “bricolage” and the way it can represent a significant opportunity to address emergent social needs. Building on a postmodernist philosophical perspective, namely Jacques Derrida’s “deconstructionism,” we attempt to unpack the bricolage phenomenon within the social entrepreneurship field. Following the findings of an in-depth longitudinal case study, we provide a theoretical conceptualization of possible entrepreneurial solutions to social needs, exploring the significant role of bricolage that is consequently interpreted as a suitable entrepreneurial opportunity to address particular types of social needs that we shall define, in a way, as emergent.