Strategy-making within and beyond organizations

When shifting the gaze away from formal organizations towards what is happening outside of them – the so called "environment" of organizations – most literatures tend to do two things (Ahrne & Brunsson, 2008; Berkowitz et al., 2022). First, they tend to neglect that this environment is to a large extent itself organized and made of organizations. Standards, international organizations, transnational movements, trade associations and other multi-stakeholder initiatives are not only organized but are themselves forms of organization. Second, they tend to overlook the importance and the specific implications of meta-organizing, i.e. creating decided order among organizations. This has led management and organization studies to either abandon the study of this environment to other disciplines, sociology, political sciences, and economics in particular; or to predominantly adopt network or institutional approaches. Here I propose to explore precisely what it means to meta-organize and how this relates to strategy-making. Drawing on examples from a growing community of scholars interested in the formation and dynamics of decided social orders among organization, I will discuss the processes and implications of meta-organizing (Berkowitz & Grothe-Hammer, 2022; Bor & Cropper, 2023; Coulombel & Berkowitz, 2024; Garaudel, 2020). I will also focus on the various unintended or unattended consequences this might create – from responsibility dilution to perpetuation of power dynamics (Brunsson et al., 2022; Carmagnac et al., 2022). I will conclude on how this perspective challenges management and organization studies and open new questions regarding how decided collaborative actions among organizations shape global order for the better or for the worse.