How women entrepreneurs manage the digitalisation of their business initiating a dialogue between the entrepreneurship as practice approach and the theory of bricolage

Abstract

The paper seeks to explain through the prism of bricolage and practices how women make their businesses digital. The analysis of three extreme cases from the mentoring industry through two theoretical prisms - the theory of bricolage and entrepreneurship as practice - reveals that women who 'bricole' while making their business digital are mostly those who are not embedded in masculine norms of entrepreneurship. We note the signs of bricolage cognition during the digitalisation. The data allow us to establish a hypothesis according to which bricolage cognition might be gendered. We also note that the choice of a familiarity-based or conventional bricolage as expressed in the three cases are mostly achieved via practices of networking, and by the social beliefs women have inherited during past experience or from their exchanges with peers. This article provides a first dialogue between the emerging literature on EAP (entrepreneurship as practice) and the theory of bricolage.