AIMS

Organizations of Organizations – calling for cross-literature insights
Track organizers: Sanne Bor (Hanken School of Economics and Vaasa University) and Héloïse Berkowitz (CNRS UMR 5303, Toulouse School of Management-Research)
Organizations of organizations, such as meta-organizations, multi-partner alliances, consortia, trade associations, business associations, formalized networks, and coalitions, are an important phenomenon in contemporary society. They contribute, among other things, to the creation of standards, the self-steering of industries, sharing of R&D and other major costs, and coordination within and across sectors. These organizations exist in all domains and every single organization – firms, NGOs, universities – is a member of at least one other organization, in a form or another. More often than not, organizations belong to several different ones. This widespread phenomenon has attracted attention in several literatures from organization studies to strategic management, resulting in a variety of terms being used.
The phenomenon itself, i.e. the organization of organizations, however, is not the focus of any literature. This results in a fragmented conceptual understanding and independent, non-inclusive theory developments in silos (Cropper, Ebers, Huxham, & Ring, 2008, 2011). Berkowitz and Bor (2017) recently called for a collaborative effort to strengthen the theoretical basis for understanding these organizations by bringing together these different streams of literature. With this track, we aim to put this call into action. While there is growing recognition of the features particular to these organizations (see e.g. Ahrne & Brunsson, 2005, 2008), we hope this track will bring new theoretical and practical insights about the consequences of such features.