FINDINGS
Even though they operated in different cities, we found a common set of
constraints and strategies at work across our four cases. These findings
tell a story that simultaneously points to the limits of citizen
responses to crisis and to the efficacy of strategies used by ordinary
people acting entrepreneurially to navigate those limits and improve
response effectiveness. We report these results according to stages of
network emergence and network evolution. We depict this as a model of
learning about self-organizing for collective action during a crisis
(see Figure 2).
———————————————–
INSERT FIGURE 2 ABOUT HERE
———————————————–
In this section, we explain elements of the model with evidence from the
four cases. In the network emergence stage, maker networks formed
rapidly in response to the crisis. As they emerged and self-organized,
the networks of makers encountered resource and institutional
limitations. Network participants learned about their resourcefulness
and legitimacy as they began producing and distributing PPE. In the
network evolution stage, network members developed new ways to overcome
their resource constraints and legitimacy deficits. They learned to
implement resourcefulness strategies including improvising, focusing,
satisficing, configuring, and brokering. They also learned strategies
for legitimation such as legitimacy seeking, pressuring, leveraging,
circumventing, and matching. The dotted lines in Figure 2 represent
differences in the presence of feedback loops in each case.