Holt, D. and Littlewood, D.C. (2017) Waste Livelihoods Amongst the Poor – Through the Lens of Bricolage. Business Strategy and the Environment, 26 (2). pp. 253-264. ISSN 1099-0836
Abstract
This paper examines two social enterprises and 25+ informal economy micro-entrepreneurs in Kenya who utilize waste materials to generate income, considered through the conceptual lens of bricolage. Waste materials can all be considered as sources of free or discounted materials that in resource-constrained and poor communities might be leveraged to generate income in the absence of employment. This paper explores three key themes that emerge from the research findings, namely the various strategic dimensions of the cases, the networks and social capital they leverage and how these livelihood models relate to various dimensions of bricolage such as improvisation, making do and the process of ‘fiddling’ or recombining resources. The findings also suggest that differing waste livelihoods have different rates of return, or profitability, and differing input requirements of capital, skills and knowledge. The paper also stresses the role of boundary spanning organizations such as NGOs and hybrid/social enterprises.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2016 The Authors. Business Strategy and the Environment published by ERP Environment and John Wiley & Sons Ltd This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Keywords: | Africa; bricolage; waste; entrepreneurship; informal economy; recycling |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > Management School (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 26 Feb 2016 16:36 |
Last Modified: | 10 Apr 2017 17:09 |
Published Version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/bse.1914 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Wiley |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1002/bse.1914 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:94728 |