Entrepreneurial Bricolage to Face Resource Constraints in Small Industry of Brown Cane Sugar

Abstract

Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) have a prominent role in the development of the economy especially in an emerging country like Indonesia. However, establishing an enterprise for the first time needs a high amount of resources ranging from human resources, finance, technology, and others. Similar to other SMEs in Indonesia, the industry of brown cane sugar does not get access to such resources and this industry has to struggle to sustain the business in order to escape from poverty. One of the resourcefulness theories, bricolage, is believed could answers why small businesses could sustain when they face resource scarcity. Bricolage theory, making do what is at hand, describing the activities of entrepreneurs to sustaining the business in a penurious environment. It is believed could not only develop the business but also trigger innovativeness, creativity, and sustainability. So, by using bricolage theory, it could answer why some entrepreneurs of brown cane sugar could maintain and keep their business running while others have to cease and alter the business. This research intends to discover bricolage enactment on how entrepreneurs overcome resource issues using bricolage. Moreover, this study also aims to find a relationship between bricolage, demographic and innovative personality of the entrepreneur. Data were collected using survey and questionnaire, then, analysed using factor analysis to check the validity and reliability of the data. To check the relationship between bricolage and innovative personality, simple linier regression is caried to check the significancy of these two variables. After that, Spearman corelation model is used to see the correlation between variables. The survey of 26 entrepreneurs of brown cane sugar in Central Aceh Regency shows that most entrepreneurs have an averagely medium degree of education while in terms of age, also, most entrepreneurs are somewhat old ranging from 45 to 64 years old. Moreover, human resource is a major constraint when running the business, specifically in finding an appropriate and loyal employee. Using bricolage, they refuse to enact limitations by hiring people in their surroundings even their family members to work in this business. Meanwhile, many entrepreneurs have the resource at hand in form of capital and knowledge since they have spent a lot of time working in a similar business before they build their own brown sugar. However, highly enacted bricolage or using parallel bricolage instead or selective bricolage in the business could hamper the business development or it is called “bricolage trap”. To ensure this problem will not emerge in the future, the entrepreneur should make a work contract and treat their labour fairly. Also, the current resources at hand are not enough to improve the business, so the entrepreneur should use different approach like enlarging their networking and market which could have benefit for the business. Data analysis of simple linier regression shows that there is no significant difference between bricolage and innovative personality (p>0.05) and the R square is 0.021 which means that the contribution of dependent variable of innovativepersonality which can explain the independent variable of bricolage is 2.1%. The correlation between variables is mostly positive even though the relationship is very weak except for the correlation between education and age which are negative. The correlation between education and bricolage is positive which means the higher education entrepreneurs have, the more they enacted bricolage in the business. The correlation between bricolage and innovative personality is positively weak. It can be seen in this business where there is less innovative or advanced technology adopted.