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.