Meta-Organizations: A Clarification and a Way Forward

Abstract

In this introduction, we reemphasize some key parts of meta-organization theory and their implications for understanding meta-organizations and meta-organizing processes. We clarify what meta-organizations are and what they are not and then analyze their key purposes and activities. We then present the papers of the special issue and discuss venues for future research. Although many key contributions have been made to meta-organization theory and research, there are many more things to investigate before we know as much about meta-organizations as we know about individual-based organizations.

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SPECIAL ISSUE: META-ORGANISATION | INTRODUCTION
Meta-Organizations: A Clarication and a Way Forward
Héloïse Berkowitz1*, Nils Brunsson2,4, Michael Grothe-Hammer5, Mikaela Sundberg3,4,
andBer trand Valiorgue6
1CNRS, Lest, Aix Marseille University, Aix en Provence, France
2Department of Business Studies, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden
3Department of Sociology, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden
4Stockholm Centre for Organizational Research (Score), Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden
5Department of Sociology and Political Science, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway
6emlyon business school, Écully, France
Abstract
In this introduction, we reemphasize some key parts of meta-organization theor y and their implications for understanding meta-organizations
and meta-organizing processes. We clarify what meta-organizations are and what they are not and then analyze their key purposes and
activities. We then present the papers of the special issue and discuss venues for future research. Although many key contributions
havebeen made to meta-organization theory and research, there are many more things to investigate before we know as much about
meta-organizations as we know about individual-based organizations.
Keywords: Meta-organization; Meta-organizing; Partial organization; Organization theory
Meta-or ganizations – organizations with other organizations
as their members – are ubiquitous. Among the more
than 10,000 international meta-organizations, there are
not only such well-known ones as the European Union (EU), the
World Trade Organization, Fédération Internationale de Football
Association (FIFA), and the International Air Transpor t Association
but also such lesser-known organizations as Birdlife International,
the Global Business Initiative, and the Forest Stewardship Council.
Most international nongovernmental organizations and all
international government organizations are meta-organizations. In
addition, there are many more national meta-organizations; many
of which are, in turn, members of international or transnational
ones. Meta-organizations attend to such matters as lobbying,
pooling resources, negotiating prices, diffusing global standards, or
tackling social and environmental problems. Much global
governance is conducted by and through meta-organizations. In
fact, it is impossible to understand contemporary globalization
processes fully without understanding the functioning of
meta-organizations.
Since Ahrne and Brunsson’s (2005, 2008) pioneer work on a
theory of meta-organizations, recent calls have invited
organization scholars to investigate this salient phenomenon
(Ahrne, Brunsson, & Seidl, 2016; Berkowitz & Bor, 2018; Spillman,
2018). Growingscholarly efforts have explored various aspects
of meta-organization, from its formation and evolution (Cropper
& Bor, 2018; Valente & Oliver, 2018) to its role in standardizing
global value chains (Carmagnac & Carbone, 2019).
The term ‘meta-organization’ has been used for designating two
different phenomena – a divergent terminology that can be found
mainly in the management and organization literature. Ahrne and
Brunsson (2005, 2008) dened meta-organizations as formal
organizations organizing other formal organizations. What has
been called the ‘European School’ (Berkowitz & Bor, 2018) has
emphasized the decided dimension of meta-organization: the
existence of an umbrella collective with some degree of actorhood,
featuring a distinctive level of at least some interconnected
decision-making (see Grothe-Hammer et al., 2022).
In 2012, Gulati et al., apparently unaware of previous theory
and research, began using the term ‘meta-organization’ for a
different phenomenon – the formation of a system-level goal
among various organizations and individuals – without implying
a joint decision capability or a formal organizational structure.
This move led to an unfortunate confusion, as the same
termcame to be used for two different concepts.
*Corresponding author: Héloïse Berkowitz, Heloise.berkowitz@univ-amu.fr

Special Issue: Meta-organisation | Introduction
2
Berkowitz et al.
The Gulati et al.’ (2012) term was later applied to such phe-
nomena as entrepreneurial ecosystems, platform ecosystems,
and other emergent interorganizational spaces (Kretschmer
et al., 2022; Roundy & Bayer, 2019) – phenomena lacking
collective actorhood at the meta level. But by broadening the
denition of meta-organization to encompass informal, loosely
connected, interorganizational arrangements, one precisely
misses the signicant characteristics and implications of
meta-organization as initially dened by Ahrne and Brunsson.
These characteristics and implications include the competition
between meta-organizations and member organizations for
autonomy, authority, and identity (Ahrne & Brunsson, 2005,
2008). These tensions result from member organizations
releasing decision power to the meta-organization, while
simultaneously expecting to retain their own decision power
and organizationality. Indeed, meta-organizations constitute
systems of systems of decisions, or put differently, decided
orders of other decided orders (Grothe-Hammer et al., 2022).
We believe that there is a need for a bounded and precise
concept of meta-organization that excludes many other forms
of cooperation among organizations that need other equally
bounded and precise concepts. Using the original denition
allows for the circumscribing of a distinct phenomenon, thus
granting the concept its analytical power.
In this introduction, we reemphasize some key parts of the
original meta-organization theory and their implications for
understanding decision-making and meta-organizing processes.
We start by highlighting what meta-organizations are and what
they are not and then analyze their key purposes and activities.
We then present the ndings from the papers of the special
issue before discussing a few research venues.
What are meta-organizations?
The central idea of meta-organization theory is that organized
collectives of organizations require specic conceptualization
because they intrinsically differ from other forms or devices of
collective action – those comprising individuals (Ahrne &
Brunsson, 2008) and those that are non-decided (Ahrne &
Brunsson, 2011; Ahrne, Brunsson, & Seidl, 2016). Three key
features characterize meta-organization and distinguish it from
such other forms of organizations as rms and public adminis-
tration and from other forms of social order, such as networks
and institutions. Meta-organization are (1) decided social
orders; (2) organizing organizations rather than individuals; and
(3) associative, in that they constitute a voluntary association
of members.
Meta-organizations constitute a decided social order rather
than an emergent one, as in the case of networks and institu-
tions. Meta-organizations result from fundamental decisions
(Ahrne, Brunsson, & Seidl, 2016; Berkowitz & Grothe-Hammer,
2022); they have decided on a name and an address, which
organizations shall be members and how decisions shall be
made. As formal organizations, they are expected to make fur-
ther fundamental decisions on rules, monitoring, and sanctions
(Ahrne & Brunsson, 2011; Ahrne, Brunsson, & Seidl, 2016).
Not only do meta-organizations constitute a decided social
order, but also every member is a decided social order. Each
member possesses its own identity, resources, strategic agenda,
and norms. It decides on its own membership, mechanisms of
hierarchy or central power, sets of rules, and systems of moni-
toring and sanctions. This reality may create autonomy and
identity tensions between members and their meta-organization,
and they may even end up competing with one another
(Berkowitz & Bor, 2018).
Ahrne and Brunsson (2008) have further argued that most
meta-organizations have the form of associations. Each mem-
ber can choose to join or leave the meta-organization. And
unlike the merging of organizations, the creation of a
meta-organization implies the addition of a new organization
without the elimination of any others. This construction results
in an embedding of systems of decisions and a layering of
organization (Grothe-Hammer et al., 2022). Decidability – the
ability of members to make collective decisions about chang-
ingan existing social order that falls under the mandate of the
meta-organization – is also rendered particularly complex.
As these three characteristics attest to, the concept of
meta-organization describes a broad diversity of organizations,
and other concepts have often been used to analyze them.
Meta-organizations with rms as members have been called
business associations (Marques, 2017) or trade associations
(Spillman, 2018), and interorganizational networks (Fortwengel
& Jackson, 2016) or network administrative organizations
(Braun, 2018; Saz-Carranza et al., 2016).
But there is an increasing number of studies that are
using meta-organization theory for understanding these
organizations – Roux and Lecocq (2022) for business cooper-
atives, for instance, or Megali (2022) and Laviolette et al. (2022)
(this issue), Berkowitz et al. (2017), Spillman (2018), or Dumez
and Renou (2020) for industry associations. Some studies of
social movements have used the meta-organization concept
(Karlberg & Jacobsson, 2015; Laurent et al., 2020). Higher-
education meta-organizations and science meta-organizations
with universities, business schools, or research centers as their
members (Bor, 2014; Brankovic, 2018; Kerwer, 2013; Zapp et
al., 2020) constitute other elds of study. A further eld of
application is international relations or international gover-
nance (Ahrne, Brunsson & Kerwer, 2016; Berkowitz & Grothe-
Hammer, 2022;Garaudel, 2020; Kerwer, 2013). Governmental
meta-organizations organize states, but they can also organize
other public administrations, like municipalities and cities
(Berkowitz, 2018; Zyzak & Jacobsen, 2019). Those interested in the
organization of sports cannot ignore such meta-organizations
as FIFA, UEFA, or the World Anti-Doping Agency (Malcourant

Special Issue: Meta-organisation | Introduction 3
Meta-organizations
et al., 2015). Studies of so-called multi-stakeholder initiatives
include research into the relatively low but increasing number
of meta-organizations that are based on heterogenous
members with different interests, rather than members with
common interests (Berkowitz et al., 2017; Carmagnac &
Carbone, 2019; de Bakker et al., 2019; Tamm Hallström &
Boström, 2010; Valente & Oliver, 2018). Most heterogeneous
meta-organizations group civil-society organizations, scientic
organizations, business actors, and public organizations
(Berkowitz et al., 2020).
… And what are they not?
As we have demonstrated, meta-organization can apply to
many different forms of collective action among organizations
that fulll different purposes. When does it not apply?
Being an organization means that there is some level of de-
cision-making regarding the organizational elements of mem-
bership, rules, hierarchy, monitoring, and sanctions (Ahrne &
Brunsson, 2011). Therefore, the meta-organization concept
cannot be applied to forms of interorganizational relations that
are not organized to some extent. For example, so-called clus-
ters cannot qualify as meta-organizations if there is no organi-
zation at the meta level (Lupova-Henry et al., 2021). Similarly,
business ecosystems can be studied as meta-organizations
only if and when there is a system of decisions encompassing
members of the ecosystem. This does not mean, however, that
there cannot be an ongoing meta-organizing process that is
an attempt to create an organized actor at a meta-level
(seeSaniossian et al., 2022, in this issue).
Although it is true that organizations and a fortiori
meta-organizations are always represented by individuals, or-
ganizational membership is a sine qua non of meta-organizations.
The fact that there are organizations having a mixed member-
ship of both individuals and organizations raises specic issues
that need to be conceptualized as such.
The study of meta-organizations presents a challenge to
organizational scholars. Overwhelmingly, theories of organiza-
tion have been based on studies of organizations with individ-
uals as their members. Such theories may well explain some
aspects of meta-organizations, but used alone, they would miss
other salient aspects. There has been a tendency for traditional
theories to inuence empirical studies and theoretical analyses,
to the extent that the particular aspects of meta-organizations
are overlooked. Meta-organizations have sometimes been an-
alyzed as if they were individual-based organizations, and schol-
ars have viewed the secretariat as the individual-based
organization and the meta-organization members as some
form of environment (Barnett & Finnemore, 2004; Bencherki &
Snack, 2016; Marcussen, 2005; Saz-Carranza et al., 2016).
Webelieve that such approaches run the risk of missing key
aspects of the settings studied.
Varieties of meta-organizations
Until now, much research in the area has been devoted to
understanding the differences between meta-organizations
and individual-based organizations. These differences can be
derived from the differences between individuals and formal
organizations. Admittedly, these two categories share some
characteristics. They can both own property and be par ties in
legal affairs. They are both perceived as social actors and as
entities possessing sovereignty, with their own identity and
goals and with clear boundaries. In many other ways, they are
different, however (Ahrne & Brunsson, 2008).
Organizations are highly differentiated entities with different
legal forms, purposes, and memberships, and they come in a
wide variety of sizes. This differentiation makes it easy to iden-
tify which organizations are potential members of a given
meta-organization. And the meta-organizations may initiate
the creation of some of its own members. For instance, inter-
national meta-organizations sometimes initiate the founding of
national ones, designed to become tting members of their
meta-organization.
Most organizations have economic resources far beyondthe
cost of founding and participating in a meta-organization. This
situation makes it relatively easy to create a meta-organization
and recruit members (Ahrne, Brunsson, & Kerwer, 2016).
On the other hand, because the members usually have
much greater resources than their meta-organization, the
meta-organization becomes highly dependent on its members,
especially its rich or powerful members.
Meta-organizations have difculty in solving internal conicts
for at least three reasons. (1) One cannot persuade organiza-
tions; only their representatives can be persuaded, but the per-
suaded representatives may have difculty persuading people
in their own organization. (2) Voting is not necessarily legiti-
mate because the idea in individual-based associations of ‘one
member, one vote’ is far from obvious among highly differenti-
ated organizations. (3) Expelling cumbersome members runs
the risk of threatening the relevance of the meta-organization.
In contrast to individual-based organizations, there is a fun-
damental similarity between the organization and the member,
as both are organizations. In order to be seen as relevant, all
organizations need some degree of autonomy, some ability to
make their own decisions. This need creates keen competition
for autonomy and raises tensions between the member and its
meta-organization. This competition, combined with the prob-
lems of conict resolution, can render meta-organizations
weak or slow and can threaten their stability.
Differences between individual-based organizations and
meta-organizations are but one key area for research, however.
There is need for more research on the differences among
meta-organizations and the causes and effects of those
differences.

Special Issue: Meta-organisation | Introduction
4
Berkowitz et al.
Meta-organizations vary in membership. They organize
states, rms, or associations. A special case of the latter is those
meta-organizations, often international ones, that organize
other meta-organizations: ‘meta-meta-organizations’. Although
most meta-organizations have relatively few members (typi-
cally tens or hundreds), they do vary greatly in size of member-
ship. And although most meta-organizations recruit members
that share salient similarities and are expected to represent
similar interests, multi-stakeholder meta-organizations recruit
members with different and even antagonistic interests
(Berkowitz et al., 2017). One should expect differences in the
workings of meta-organizations with different memberships.
Meta-organizations vary in how rich they are and how many
employees they have. Many of them are completely depen-
dent on membership fees, whereas others, such as most inter-
national sports organizations, have incomes of their own
– sometimes extremely large incomes. Some meta-organizations
have no employees; rather they let their members take turns
handling the administration. Others have secretariats that may
reach thousands of employees. These differences are likely to
affect the balance between the meta-organization and its
members. One can also ask what factors are important for
creating these differences among meta-organizations.
Meta-organizations have different – or different combinations
of – purposes and may serve at least four main purposes (Ahrne
& Brunsson, 2008). (1) They are established in order to facilitate
interactions among members – interactions that may consist of
collaboration among the members, as in the Universal Post
Union or competition among them, as in sports organizations.
(2) They may aim at facilitating joint action toward their environ-
ment, as defense alliances do; or they may issue statements in
the public debate, as many civil society organizations or business
associations do. (See also Rajwani et al., 2015; Spillman, 2018) (3)
Meta-organizations deal with the identity and status of their
members by enabling members to create a collective identity –
preferably a high-status identity – as some meta-organizations
for universities do (Hedmo, 2012), or by creating a status order
among its members, as sports associations do. (4) Yet
anotherpossible purpose of meta-organizations is the handling
of common tasks that the members have outsourced to the
meta-organization, not because they have to be done collec-
tively, but because they can be more effectively handled by the
meta-organization. These four purposes translate into four com-
mon and crucial activities in meta-organizations: (1) governance
or comanagement activities, (2) advocacy activities, (3) bound-
ary and category work, and (4) service provision – each of
which we examine next.
Four activities of meta-organizations
The purpose of facilitating interaction among members
generally leads to governance or comanagement activities.
Meta-organizations contribute to regulating, controlling, and
managing behaviors. They may, indeed, act as what has been
called regulatory intermediaries – organizations that contrib-
ute to dening, diffusing, translating, and adapting national or
international rules (Berkowitz et al., 2020; Jordana, 2017),
thereby shaping laws and markets (Berkowitz et al., 2020;
Berkowitz & Souchaud, 2019; Peixoto & Temmes, 2019). Multi-
stakeholder meta-organizations are increasingly conducting
this task of regulation, especially in a perspective of socio-eco-
logical transition (Berkowitz et al., 2020; Carmagnac & Carbone,
2019). But as relatively weak organizations, meta-organizations
are often primarily producers of standards or soft law for their
own members (Lupova-Henry et al., 2021; Rasche et al., 2013;
Vifell & Thedvall, 2012). In the extreme case of the EU (Ahrne,
Brunsson, & Kerwer, 2016; Kerwer, 2013), however,
meta-organizations can even organize and regulate states by
producing large-scale international or transnational regulatory
frameworks, which may have repercussions beyond their own
organizational boundaries. Non-members can even be forced
to adopt similar rules to those of the member states if they
want to undertake transactions with the EU (Kerwer, 2013).
Voluntary membership and legitimacy of self-regulation may
make comanagement through meta-organizations quite effec-
tive (Vifell & Thedvall, 2012). This is probably why several schol-
ars have recently investigated the role of meta-organizations in
tackling grand challenges (Berkowitz & Grothe-Hammer, 2022;
Chaudhury et al., 2016; Fernandes & Lopes, 2022). Meta-
organizations facilitate comanagement activities, such as the
joint control of the use of collective resources. This governance
dimension of meta-organizations connects with the literature
on the governance of commons – natural or intellectual
resources that are held in common by society, such as the air, a
forest, or heritage sites (Corazza et al., 2021; Ostrom, 1990).
Indeed, several characteristics of meta-organization – joint
decision-making, horizontal participation, and self-regulation,
for example – render them particularly suited for managing
common resources (Berkowitz et al., 2020; Corazza et al.,
2021). Some of Ostrom’s (1990) principles for individuals
managing common resources largely echo the denitions and
features of meta-organizations as governance devices, even
though the actors in our case are organizations. Specically, the
reality of meta-organizations is often reected in what Ostrom
identied as dening clear group boundaries, matching the
governance model to local needs and conditions, ensuring par-
ticipation of stakeholders in rule making, ensuring that commu-
nity members’ rights are respected by external authorities,
self-monitoring members’ behavior, having a system of gradu-
ated sanctions for rule violation by members, creating a con-
ict-resolution system, and ensuring multi-level responsibility
for governing the common resource.
The purpose of joint action often leads meta-organizations to
involve themselves in advocacy – acting as representatives fortheir

Special Issue: Meta-organisation | Introduction 5
Meta-organizations
members and defending their interests (Lawton et al., 2018;
Marques, 2017; Rajwani et al., 2015). Meta-organizations can
negotiate on prices, contracts, and regulations, for example
(Berkowitz & Bor, 2018). In their advocacy role, meta-organizations
often rely on outreach – on gently raising awareness or nudging
actors on certain issues (Berkowitz et al., 2020; Valente & Oliver,
2018). Outreach can also be the main or only strategy for
attracting new members to meta-organizations.
The purpose of creating identity and status orders often
leads to what can be called boundary and categor y work. Meta-
organizations set organizational boundaries for and around their
members regarding identity, categories, and resources. As Ahrne
and Brunsson (2008) have argued, meta-organizations establish
a collective identity or family name, although they may face
obstacles in developing these ‘meta-level’ identities (Laviolette
etal., 2022; Patvardhan et al., 2015). Many meta-organizations
seek to construct, adapt, and reinforce their collective identity.
This activity has been specically documented in business
associations (see Spillman, 2012), but it also occurs in sports
organizations, like FIFA, or standards organizations, like ISO
(Ahrne & Brunsson, 2008). Maintaining the status of the
meta-organization and its members sometimes requires that
measures be taken against a black sheep – a member whose
poor behavior is negatively affecting the whole group. By
managing a collective reputation, meta-organizations also
protect collective interests and identities (Berkowitz et al., 2017;
King et al., 2002; see also Laviolette et al., 2022, in this issue).
In relation to the creation of a collective identity,
meta-organizations conduct some form of category work.
‘Categories represent a meaningful consensus about the fea-
tures of some entities as shared by actors grouped together as
an audience’ (Durand & Paolella, 2013, p. 1100). Meta-
organizations in the form of trade associations, cooperatives,
and multi-stakeholder groups are all involved to a greater or
lesser extent in dening categories for their members – cate-
gories of products, for instance. They may even be involved in
organizing whole newmarkets before their legalization by gov-
ernments, as Berkowitz and Souchaud (2019) showed in rela-
tion to the so-called sharing economy.
Meta-organizations also provide service production for their
members (Berkowitz & Bor, 2018), par ticularly the production
of information (Bradley, 1965). This information takes various
forms, ranging from statistics on specic industries to collective
research. Sometimes the information is sold to members, in
order to generate revenues for the meta-organization –
through training, for instance. But services to members may
also include more concrete benets, like producing specic
joint resources or making them available – infrastructures,
for example, or auction houses in the case of business
cooperatives, producer organizations, and other agricultural
meta-organizations (Berkowitz et al., 2020; Lerman &
Parliament, 1990;Trebbin, 2014). Meta-organizations may also
facilitate knowledge sharing and capacity building among mem-
bers through workshops, events, and the identication and
diffusion of best practices (Berkowitz et al., 2017; Vifell &
Thedvall, 2012). Meta-organizations that focus on providing
services tend to be more homogeneous and highly dependent
on their members, who will act as clients (Berkowitz & Bor,
2018). This dependency may also be affected by the place and
role of a secretariat and by the dynamics of hierarchy and
prerogatives. (see Roux & Lecocq, 2022, in this issue.)
In what follows, we provide a short description of the
remaining papers in this special issue. They analyze
meta-organizations that differ in membership, purpose, and
primary activities.
Dynamics of meta-organizing: Articles in the
special issue
The four articles in this special issue have a common denomina-
tor: dealing with the dynamics of meta-organizing, creating a
meta-organization of coordinating members or joint activities,
and making joint decisions at the meta-organizational level, all of
which have implications for efciency, legitimacy, or market orga-
nization. These papers have in common their examination of
meta-organizations as moving entities conducting sets of activi-
ties that may affect the collective over time.
We rst present the paper that examines the role of a
meta-organization in market organization and the effects of the
delegation of power to one member organization. The second
paper deals with the process of creating multi-stakeholder
meta-organizations, and the third with collective identity forma-
tion and evolution at the meta-organization level. The fourth and
last paper addresses the growing power of a secretariat, which
contributes to the efciency of the meta-organization.
Delegation of meta-organizational power to a
few members
In this rst article, Théophile Megali (2022) analyzes digital
platforms as members of meta-organizations. He discusses
how a meta-organization of digital platforms in the eld of
online advertising was created with the use of a digital tool, in
order to deal with a global problem for the industry: ad-block-
ing preventing advertisements from appearing on a web page.
Themeta-organization established and implemented industrial
standards. What is original, however, is the meta-organization’s
delegation of internal self-regulatory functions to some of its
members, thereby contributing to the partial organization of
the industry. Rather than the meta-organization conducting
monitoring and sanctioning itself (see, for instance, Berkowitz
& Souchaud, 2019), some of its members act as regulatory
intermediaries. The practice was facilitated by the presence of
one of the main organizations, Google, ensuring rule

Special Issue: Meta-organisation | Introduction
6
Berkowitz et al.
enforcement, which allowed Google to strengthen itself in the
market. Because the standard became dominant, this note-
worthy development had implications for nonmembers as
well. The author explains this phenomenon by referring to the
collective construction of the standard through the meta-orga-
nization, which not only created legitimacy but also raised anti-
trust concerns. In addition, the meta-organization protected its
members from conicts with external stakeholders, thereby
ensuring the meta-organization’s long-term durability.
The creation of multi-stakeholder
meta-organizations
In the second paper, Saniossian et al. (2022) report on a study
of meta-organization formation, or what the authors call
meta-organizations ‘in the making’. They discuss the specics of
creating multi-stakeholder meta-organizations, or those with a
heterogeneous membership. Through the study of four cases,
the authors propose a feedback loop: a three-stage creation
process based on members’ logics of action, evolving organiza-
tional boundaries and organizing practices. They describe in
ne detail the emergence of shared goals among member
organizations. One stage is ‘individual emergence’, in which
some leading organizations seek to enroll member organiza-
tions in establishing a meta-organization. In the next stage,
‘divided groups’ (depending on the legal forms of members)
develop group activities needed to clarify collective action
goals and processes of organization. In the last stage, all mem-
bers are integrated in a collective group with a specic strategy
and governance model at the meta level, nally creating the
multi-stakeholder meta-organization as an actor. It is notewor-
thy that the research shows a key motivation for establishing a
multi-stakeholder meta-organization: creating sustainable social
activities, per se – not merely for the benet of member orga-
nizations – thus connecting with phenomena discussed in the
social and solidarity economy literature.
Collective identity formation
In the third paper, Laviolette et al. (2022) analyze collective
identity formation. Using an in-depth case study of a
meta-organization of cider producers in Quebec, the authors
reveal the complex processes at the heart of a meta-organization’s
collective identity. They show that a meta-organization must
continuously strike a balance between aligning and differentiat-
ing members, which it can do through membership denition
and product categorization activities. These inward processes
are complemented by outward processes. The meta-organization
also needs to demonstrate the legitimacy of its collective iden-
tity toward state or public authorities, which it can do by assem-
bling the legitimacy of its leading members and by positioning
itself to address expectations. This study contributes to recent
research on the collective identity of meta-organizations viewed
as cycles of identity work and play (Webb, 2017).
Secretariats and issues of efciency and control
over members
In the fourth and last paper, Roux and Lecocq (2022) analyze
how a secretariat may become a ‘necessary evil’: a powerful
force that controls the members rather than the other
way round but, at the same time, contributes to the
meta-organization’s effectiveness. The authors demonstrate the
value of analyzing three levels of action in business cooperatives:
the level of member organizations, the level of the
meta-organization, and the level of the secretariat. Although the
literature has hinted at the structural weakness of
meta-organizations (Ahrne, Brunsson, & Seidl, 2016; Kerwer,
2013), this case study reveals that meta-organizational effective-
ness may depend on the ability of the meta-organization to
grant prerogatives to its secretariat. The more prerogatives
thesecretariat gained, the more effective the meta-organization
became in achieving its members’ collective purpose, and
the more the members regretted losing control to the
meta-organization. In empowering its secretariat, the meta-orga-
nization became stronger, more able to sustain itself in the long
term, and more likely to achieve its purpose, while protecting
itsmembers.
Future research on the dynamics of
meta-organizations
The papers in this special issue contribute to a more processual
understanding of meta-organizations. They also illustrate the diver-
sity of meta-organizations: industry associations, multi-stakeholder
associations, and business cooperatives with strong secretariats.
The papers actualize at least three salient issues for further
research.
Do the differences among meta-organizations
affect other factors?
It would be valuable to analyze systematically whether
differences, varieties of, and variations in meta-organization
affect creation processes, collective identity activities, the
strengthening of certain members or of a secretariat, and
effects of the meta-organization outside of its boundaries on
such external factors as markets. From that perspective,
moving beyond single case studies would be necessary in
order to build a more general understanding of meta-organi-
zations. More multiple case studies and cross-country or
cross-sector comparisons may offer rich insights into the diver-
sity of meta-organizations, and the ways in which this diversity
affects meta-organizing dynamics and processes.

Special Issue: Meta-organisation | Introduction 7
Meta-organizations
Are there other viable options to the
meta-organization?
The papers in this issue, along with much of the other
meta-organization research, seem to take meta-organization for
granted. Meta-organization studies are often based upon the
implicit assumption that there would be no alternative available
to member organizations but to collaborate in the form of a
meta-organization. Yet, the question remains: why does a
meta-organization exist in this situation? We still understand rel-
atively little about the reasons for establishing meta-organizations
or why organizations decide to participate in an existing
meta-organization rather than collaborating in other forms.
To our knowledge, no study has systematically examined the
comparative advantage of meta-organizations, particularly
multi-stakeholder meta-organizations over other arrangements.
We lack an in-depth understanding of the various options and
the benets of and motivations for establishing one or the other
arrangement, depending on the context and objectives of the
collective. From that perspective, it may also prove valuable to
analyze whether the contexts of action – geopolitical setting,
sectors and industries, and geographical territories in which
actors are embedded – affect the form of the collective and the
conditions under which it becomes a meta-organization.
How do meta-organizations gain power relative
to their members and their environment?
Many meta-organizations are effective in creating and sustaining
global order (Ahrne & Brunsson, 2013), and multi-stakeholder
meta-organizations may even be a powerful instrument in
tackling contemporary grand challenges (Berkowitz et al.,
2020; Chaudhury et al., 2016). Other meta-organizations
started with great ambitions but remain relatively insignicant.
Comparisons between strong and weak meta-organizations
could provide insights into the factors and processes that lead
to strength or weakness.
To these three questions for future research, we would
like to add a few more possible areas of inquiry: (1) the
meta-organization as a social order, (2) layering and hypocrisy
in meta-organizations, and (3) responsibility and actorhood in
meta-organizations.
The conceptualization of meta-organization as a
decided social order has critical implications
It invites organizational scholars to attend to the emergent or
decided ordering of collective action (Ahrne & Brunsson, 2011);
to the evolution from emergent to decided (Berkowitz &
Souchaud, 2019; Megali, 2022); and to the denition, conditions,
and drivers of the institutionalization of meta-organization – a
largely neglected question. This dimension of the denition also
calls attention not only to the intertwining of social orders
in meta-organizations (Berkowitz & Grothe-Hammer, 2022;
Laamanen et al., 2020) and to its consequences for
meta-organizational processes and activities, but also to
decidability, actorhood, and other aspects of organizationality
(Grothe-Hammer et al., 2022).
The specic membership of meta-organizations invites exam-
ination of the existing or potential consequences of layering of
organizations. Some of the tensions between members and
their meta-organizations around identity, autonomy, resources,
and goals have been addressed in this special issue and in
other studies (Laviolette et al., 2022; Roux & Lecocq, 2022),
but more needs to be understood, particularly in relation to
layering (Grothe-Hammer et al., 2022). The talk, decisions,
and actions of organizations may be systematically inconsis-
tent as a result of the inconsistent demands of their specic
environments, implying organizational hypocrisy (Brunsson,
2007, Ch.7). Recent literature has focused on a particular
form of hypocrisy, namely greenwashing, resulting from the
pressure on rms to take environmental action and yet be
protable (Wright & Nyberg, 2017). We still understand
relatively little about these inconsistencies specic to
meta-organizations. The complexity of layering in meta-organiza-
tions may create multi-level inconsistencies, whereby the
meta-organization makes decisions that are inconsistent with
member actions. Do meta-organizations facilitate hypocrisy?
The nature of meta-organization also raises
specic issues of responsibility and actorhood
This important issue has been somewhat overlooked in thisspe-
cial issue. It remains unclear whether and how a meta-organization
can exist without achieving actorhood (Grothe-Hammer, 2019).
A meta-organization actorhood means that the meta-organization
is able to make collective decisions, is recognized and address-
able as a collective actor, and ultimately takes responsibility for
decisions for them (Berkowitz et al., 2020). Responsibility and
actorhood in meta-organizations can be conceived as deeply
interconnected. More organization sometimes leads to the con-
centration of responsibility, sometimes to its dilution (Brunsson
et al., 2022). What happens in meta-organization and the layer-
ing of organization? How do meta-organizations compare with
other forms of interactions among organizations in terms of
responsibility concentration or dilution? In certain settings and
under certain conditions, the creation of a meta-organization
may dilute or confuse responsibility (Carmagnac et al., 2022).
Indeed, the establishing of a meta-organization may create what
we could call smokescreen effects – mechanisms to hide from
negative actions – which would explain why member organiza-
tions, especially rms, so easily create or join meta-organizations.
Few works have examined this darker side of meta-organizations
(Carmagnac et al., 2022).

Special Issue: Meta-organisation | Introduction
8
Berkowitz et al.
In conclusion, although many key contributions have been
made to the theory of meta-organization, the research is still in
its infancy. There are many more things to investigate before
we know as much about meta-organizations as we know
about individual-based organizations. Meta-organizations
offer a promising eld of research for innovative scholars
who are interested in new discoveries and new theoretical
development.
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