Institutional Limitations
Legitimacy deficits. The institutional limitations makers
encountered in the network emergence stage had critical implications for
front line workers in need of PPE. A clinician in Triport described the
limitations faced in a hospital, “We had all these homemade masks and
[the hospital] just said, ‘No. We can’t [accept them]. These are
not certified.’ Instead, then we had to just wear the same certified
mask for two weeks and it was disgusting.” For the makers attempting to
provide the PPE, these limitations heightened legitimacy deficits
related to trust, support, access, quality, and reliability. Table 2
lists examples of institutions informants reported as a help or a
hindrance to their efforts.
First, having few or no social ties with institutions such as hospitals
meant makers began with low levels of trust . Informal social ties
to individual hospital employees, for example, did not typically confer
upon makers the type of trust that comes from experience with
established relationships, such as those enjoyed by traditional
suppliers with contracts. An informant who brokered between hospitals
and a maker space in Midburg described the lack of trust:
There was a perception that we were this ragtag bunch…
vigilantes trying to solve this problem. We weren’t really
established… Supply chain managers are like, ‘Are you just a
bunch of people… knitting in a garage together making face masks?
…We don’t know who the f— you are. …I don’t know if
we can trust you.’
For a maker space like this, desiring to build a more open crisis
response network was insufficient to increase trust and cooperation with
institutions outside the network if makers were not linked to those
institutions prior to the pandemic (Burt et al., 2021).
Second, makers were limited by a lack of support from other
institutions such as corporations and government. A corporate maker
space manager in Edgeville told us that makers with ready access to
corporate resources were nonetheless often stymied because the company
did not “fully support” their efforts to utilize company equipment and
space. A clinician in Stilton who acted as recipient and producer of PPE
perceived a lack of government support:
None of these [PPE designs] were ever being evaluated in terms
of a design that would be supported by these agencies. They kind of just
were mum about the situation. And this goes to a state and federal
level… they appreciate these efforts, but I noticed that they
weren’t exactly supporting them outright.
Thus, makers faced legitimacy deficits as they attempted to engage the
structures, procedures, and policies of various complex bureaucratic
institutions.
Third, makers encountered obstacles related to access to
potential recipients for the PPE they produced. An individual maker in
Triport who ordered a 3D printer specifically to be able to make PPE
from home said, “[Hospitals] were not returning calls. Here I am
producing things with nobody to get them to.” This informant continued,
“I couldn’t get through to find somebody to take these things. I was
stuck with red tape.” Makers generally understood that institutions
like hospitals have processes for acquiring supplies and that they
represented atypical vendors that were off contract. A representative
from a maker space in Stilton spoke cautiously about how one health care
system restricted access by not permitting employees to openly ask for
PPE and that stories circulated of people being fired for violating
those policies. Another clinician in Stilton described the same access
restrictions in nursing homes at a point in the pandemic when nursing
homes were already hot spots for a highly vulnerable population.
Fourth, the PPE that makers produced also presented a legitimacy deficit
regarding quality . An informant from Midburg commented, “Some
hospitals… were like, ‘What have you done to show that these are
up to a certain quality?’ And we didn’t have anything, really, to show
or to prove… Nothing about longevity or efficacy testing. I don’t
think that we were able to do those things.” In dealing with
sophisticated purchasing managers accustomed to dealing with rigid
product specifications, makers lacked the demonstrated ability to
produce according to recipient quality requirements and expectations.
Fifth, the cumulative effect of these legitimacy deficits can be
encapsulated in concerns over reliability . Makers faced
reliability challenges in terms of not only dependability – their
ability to reliably deliver what was needed when and where it was needed
– but also in terms of not introducing security risks to organizations.
Producers and recipients alike in our cases expressed paramount concern
over liability risks. A maker network leader in Triport described his
effort to broker across numerous entities to overcome this challenge,
“[Another maker space leader] and I talked to the lawyers at
[institutional maker space]. Even after we had the state’s
department of public health tell us they would provide blanket indemnity
to anybody who made things, their lawyer still didn’t want to get
involved.” Willing actors in producer and recipient organizations often
lacked institutional support for their PPE efforts because of concerns
over reliability. Many institutional leaders feared that even
well-intentioned entrepreneurial and resourceful actions would cause
more harm than the repercussions of the pandemic.
Embeddedness. As emergent maker networks encountered
institutional limitations early in their crisis response efforts, they
experienced varying combinations of these deficits based on their
community and institutional embeddedness (Williams & Shepherd, 2021).
In our cases, embeddedness was a property of individual nodes – actors,
groups, or organizations – not a property of entire clusters or the
broader network. Nodes with a greater degree of embeddedness tended to
possess greater social capital as brokers and organizers (Burt, 1999).
We found Edgeville to have a relatively high degree of embeddedness,
which translated well to fewer legitimacy deficits. Led by an
independent maker space, Edgeville had established numerous
relationships with the city, the small business development association,
the state manufacturing association, local universities, and charities.
In combination with its relatively higher network coordination among a
tighter cluster of actors, Edgeville’s embeddedness helped boost the
legitimacy of the many nodes concentrated around the three main
organizations.
Makers in Triport experienced moderate embeddedness that was distributed
across many institutions, including universities, public health
agencies, public libraries, and the city and state governments. Most
makers faced “pushback” from the institutions they participated in,
while a few actors were able to break through to garner institutional
support, boosting initial legitimacy for actors within the emerging
decentralized network in the early weeks of crisis response.
Midburg exhibited a more polarized picture of embeddedness among its
independently coordinating nodes. Several hospitals and universities in
Midburg were directly involved in PPE design and production activities
of their own, but maker spaces and small businesses in our study found
it difficult to participate in those clusters. Thus, parallel network
efforts emerged and the independently coordinating clusters with lower
embeddedness faced legitimacy deficits on their own. The parts of a
network that faced lower deficits were able to spend less effort on
legitimizing and more effort on coordinating resources for an effective
response to the crisis.
An unexpected finding, given our initial sample selection criteria, was
that data for Stilton indicated it had a relatively low degree of
pre-pandemic embeddedness to go along with a higher incidence of
parallel network initiatives, despite glowing depictions of a high
degree of coordination and centralized PPE efforts on websites.
Nevertheless, legitimacy deficits existed in all four of our cases.
Further, makers across all cases encountered resource and institutional
limitations simultaneously, further stressing their already strained
collective action efforts.