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Abstract
Purpose To identify entrepreneurial strategies, actions, and innovative measures to create resourcefulness for addressing constraints in the development of eldercare services. The study also analyzes and suggests potential antecedents and outcomes.
Method A grounded theory approach was used to identify central aspects and conditions for entrepreneurial resourcefulness in the development of eldercare services in India and Sweden. Interviews with senior managers were analyzed and four successful organizations were selected for deeper contextual analyses.
Findings Three major themes of entrepreneurial capacity to create resourcefulness were identified: (1) to overcome financial constraints and cost diseconomies, (2) to overcome human resource constraints, and (3) to bring about service innovation in existing market/industry constraints. These were creatively met by measures taken to overcome these constraints. The analysis also found limits of entrepreneurial resourcefulness. For instance, despite resourcefulness there are still challenges related to attracting and retaining care workers, value conflicts, and person-centered care.
Originality/value Many studies confirm the importance of resource but few have unpacked the phenomenon and its implications. Based on senior managers and successful organizations in both emerging and mature context of eldercare, and a conceptual model, this study contributes to better understanding of resourcefulness in such contexts.
1.Introduction
In health care and eldercare, the continuous creation of service in organizing and delivering care is the key to create better values for users, organizations, and society (Porter, 2010). Eldercare services are now expanding in many countries and demand a mobilization of resources to create different kinds of value. This study explores resourcefulness from entrepreneurial actions to seek and develop resources in order to establish eldercare services originating from successful entrepreneurial organizations in two different cultural and institutional contexts: India and Sweden. The analysis delineates the constraints in terms of (new) challenges and self-limiting conditions as well as challenges that emerge due to focusing too much on resourcefulness (i.e., the limits of resourcefulness).
Managers play an entrepreneurial role in creating value. This means that they, either on their own or inside organizations, "pursue opportunities or future situations that are both desirable and feasible" (Stevenson and Jarillo, 1990: 23). Importantly, this process involves both the simultaneous pursuit of opportunities and the mobilization of resources that may or may not yet be within the entrepreneur's control (Stevenson and...