2019 Volume 53 Issue 1 Pages 37-52
The research aims to reexamine and correct the bricolage theory in dealing with resource constraints by proposing the microscopic viewpoint of resource unit and the perspective of inter-resource relationships. The results suggest that some circumstances that are conventionally perceived as resource constrains may also become the sources of a competitive advantage.
The microscopic viewpoint means disaggregating further the conventionally-assumed unit of analysis of a resource in the existing resourced-based view studies and re-evaluating each of its elements in various contexts. This enables bricoleurs to rerecognize resource’s potentials and valuable elements that had been neglected in implicit assumptions and analysis level of resources previously. In additions, the microscopic viewpoint helps discover unconstrained elements that are not directly the sources of constraints inside a resource primarily considered worthless in the macroscopic setting of the unit of analysis. Thus, this viewpoint will open up new ways of creating and strengthening these elements.
The perspective of inter-resource relationships refers to a consideration of the dynamic relationships between resources in which constituent elements as sources of constraints in certain resources (in the macroscopic setting of resource unit) are substituted for and supplemented with constituent elements of other resources in resource combinations.
Therefore, this paper presents a new analytical viewpoint of management resources by applying such new modifications to the existing bricolage theory.
