Entrepreneurial Bricolage and Innovation in Sport for Development and Peace Organizations

Many sport for development and peace organizations operate with limited resources and in low-resource environments. While resource constraints impede some organizations, others demonstrate an adaptive behavior, known as bricolage, to repurpose and flexibly engage existing resources to accomplish their goals. In this study, we ask what distinguishes organizations that engage in bricolage from others. We specifically test whether sport for development and peace nonprofits that engage in bricolage are more likely to engage in social innovation, and we test those findings against organizational size, age, and characteristics of organizations’ operating environments. Using data from an international sample of 161 sport for development and peace nonprofits, we find that organizations employing greater levels of bricolage also demonstrate significantly higher levels of innovation, except for process-focused innovations, which are significantly associated with environmental turbulence. Organizational size itself does not appear to influence the use of bricolage or the relationship between bricolage and innovation.