Discussion
We set out to understand the conditions under which emergent maker
networks facilitated effective responses to the need for PPE during the
COVID-19 pandemic. Early in the pandemic, makers supplied life-saving
stop-gap supplies of PPE to recipients desperately in need, filling an
institutional void and contributing to the public good (Clement et al.,
2018; Drabek & McEntire, 2003). By applying a social network approach
to study entrepreneurial crisis response, we explained how makers
navigated limits in their resource and institutional environments. We
found that effective crisis response was contingent on the interplay of
learned resourcefulness and legitimation while self-organizing.
The features depicted at the center of our model in Figure 2 highlight a
process of learning about resources, legitimacy, and self-organizing for
collective entrepreneurial action. Prior studies have demonstrated the
role of resource mobilization as a mediator between structural network
roles and response effectiveness (Williams & Shepherd, 2018). We have
shown that when network structure is emergent and fluid, network
behaviors can vary according to ability, intentions, resource handling,
and legitimacy (Kwon et al., 2020). Our study identified five learned
resourcefulness behaviors (improvising, focusing, satisficing,
configuring, and brokering) and five learned legitimation behaviors
(seeking, circumventing, matching, pressuring, and leveraging).
Entrepreneurial actors undertake behaviors such as these to change their
positions in networks so they can acquire and coordinate resources,
solve novel problems, and pursue opportunities (Hallen et al., 2020;
Sullivan & Ford, 2014). We proposed, in Figure 2, a model of
self-organizing for compassion (Madden et al., 2012) in the interstices
between established organizations and emergent groups (Stallings &
Quarantelli, 1985). Makers adapted to changing circumstances throughout
the evolution of their communities’ networks and learned to make
adjustments to improve their crisis response effectiveness, even as they
struggled with constraints that limited what they could accomplish
(Williams et al., 2017).
Implications for theory. Our findings contribute to the
entrepreneurship literature related to resourcefulness, legitimacy, and
collective action. First, consistent with the emerging literature on
entrepreneurial resourcefulness , we found that certain conditions
are conducive for taking action in the face of resource constraints and
institutional changes (Corbett & Katz, 2013; Welter et al., 2018). Our
study builds a process perspective about how organizers enable creative
uses of resources outside of routine organizational operations and in
the context of highly distributed, collective entrepreneurial action
(Sonenshein, 2014). We identified how entrepreneurial resourcefulness
must take account of legitimacy to mobilize support. We showed that
resourcefulness has its limits, when constrained by low legitimacy
(Fisher et al., 2021). Thus, we have called scholars’ attention to the
importance of learning within behavioral and social resourcefulness for
entrepreneurial action under resource constraints (Bradley et al.,
2011).
Second, our multisite study enabled us to analyze institutional dynamics
across and between various types of institutions and actors while
integrating the property, process, and perception perspectives oflegitimacy (Suddaby et al., 2016). We have shown the repertoire
of different practices and interactions actors can utilize to achieve
legitimacy (Vaara & Tienari, 2008), a property that actors possess to
varying degrees. From this perspective, makers are the objects of
legitimacy (or lack thereof) conferred upon them by institutions.
Because of their relative obscurity in most communities, makers were
simply invisible to powerful community actors before the pandemic.
Moreover, they celebrated their anonymity. Thus, they were at a
disadvantage in the network emergence stage because of their substantial
legitimacy deficit relative to the other actors.
Moving into the network evolution stage and makers’ attempts to effect
change in the face of institutional norms, legitimacy became a matter of
dealing with competing judgements regarding the qualifications of makers
and maker spaces for producing acceptable PPE (Bitektine & Haack,
2014). For those makers who deployed combinations of legitimation
strategies, they understood legitimacy as a process that actors engage
in to varying extents (Johnson et al., 2006). Understood this way, our
study identifies makers as actors undergoing an evolution from being
objects of legitimacy to becoming agents of social change (Suddaby et
al., 2016). In makers, therefore, we see the change efforts of ordinary
citizens taking agency in pursuit of cognitive and socio-political
acceptance by dominant institutions (H. E. Aldrich & Fiol, 1994).
Third, by framing our study at the intersection of social networks and
crisis entrepreneurship, we build upon a multidisciplinary understanding
of collective action in crisis . The maker phenomenon is a timely
case study of the importance of legitimacy and community management in a
crisis (Corsini, Dammicco, & Moultrie, 2020). Collective action in a
crisis is not only about avoiding depletion or overconsumption of shared
resources (Olson, 1971), but also about the rapid creation of new
solutions and production of new resources at scale (Dutton et al.,
2006). Our analysis of the maker response to the pandemic offers a
framework for studying collaborative entrepreneurship through local,
national, and global networks (H. E. Aldrich & Whetten, 1981).
Effective collaborative crisis response also requires attention to the
volunteerism and staffing burdens that can deplete the collective of its
ability to self-organize and deploy its resources (Barker & Gump,
1964). In learned resourcefulness and legitimation, we identify several
patterns of social learning relevant to a crisis situation
(Chamlee-Wright, 2010). Future studies can explore whether, under the
pressures of a crisis, emergent networks may encounter diminishing
returns to learning and response effectiveness if they pursue broad
membership and open coordination (Burt et al., 2021) because those may
eventually detract from the collective’s ability to focus its
resourcefulness on the recipients it is best matched to help.
Implications for practice and policy. Several practical and
policy reform recommendations have surfaced within the maker community
as a result of the focal phenomenon (Cavalcanti et al., 2021; Corsini,
Dammicco, Bowker-Lonnecker, et al., 2020). We have identified three
pathways where private and public entrepreneurs can help improve the
infrastructure for future citizen responses to large scale disruptions
(Klein et al., 2013). First, pathways for legitimation of citizen-made
artifacts – such as a curated digital library of clinically approved
NIH designs – could help producers and recipients coalesce around
standard designs for the most critical supplies. Second, pathways for
legitimation of citizen actions – such as process recommendations and
legal guidance for production, testing, packaging, delivery, and intake
of supplies – could help reduce burdens of liability and regulation in
a supply crisis by establishing emergency production authorization.
Third, pathways for legitimation of citizen actors – such as an
official two-sided platform for matchmaking between potential producers
and recipients – could help connect those who need help with those in
need.
Limitations. We acknowledge several limitations of our study.
First, networks are dynamic and are constructs used by researchers to
analyze a portion of a larger schema (H. E. Aldrich & Whetten, 1981).
Our depiction of network features is a simplification of chaotic
processes, in which people play multiple roles and represent multiple
new and existing organizations, some of which were social media groups
rather than legally structured organizations. Second, our study is
geographically limited to four cities in the U.S. and does not represent
all types of self-organized responses to the pandemic, especially those
in other political and regulatory environments. Third, our observations
of response effectiveness are not comprehensive. We were aware of many
response efforts that gained little traction, but we could not observe
many unsuccessful attempts. Fourth, our structured interview format was
flexible for producers and recipients but presented constraints we had
to work around for some informants. Despite offering anonymity, some
potential informants, especially clinicians and hospital administrators,
were reluctant to disclose things or declined participation due to the
sensitivity of their experiences and employment.
Conclusion. Our study highlights the dynamic interplay of
learned resourcefulness and learned legitimation as emergent groups
self-organize through stages of network emergence and evolution in
response to a crisis. Our findings demonstrate that learned network
behaviors can help collectives of ordinary people act entrepreneurially
under significant resource constraints and institutional limitations.
These collective actions in response to crisis are not without their
limits, but they are an important area for further research and policy
reform to prepare for future crises that warrant entrepreneurial action.