Theorizing Meta‐Organizations' Role in Addressing Societal Problems: Hybridizing Institutional Logics to Tackle Modern Slavery

Abstract

Modern slavery is increasingly recognized as a supply chain risk to both workers and firms. Neither corporate efforts nor market‐based regulation has adequately addressed the issue. This is largely because they fail to reconcile the conflicting priorities between efficiency and anti‐slavery goals inherent in such efforts. Public sector purchasing—often conducted through meta‐organizations—offers both the scale and scope needed to change supply chain behaviors. Yet meta‐organizations and how they effect change remain underexplored and under‐theorized. Through analysis of archival material and 44 interviews with public sector buyers and purchasing consortia managers, we construct two case studies of meta‐organizations. These cases reveal rich insights into meta‐organizations' capacity both to improve public sector knowledge and compliance around modern slavery and to compel suppliers to enhance their anti‐slavery efforts. The findings show that, by adapting purchasing structures and developing expertise, and thereby hybridizing the logics of efficiency and anti‐slavery, purchasing consortia can embed accountability within and beyond the bounds of their memberships. The study contributes to theories of meta‐organizations and institutional logics in the context of supply chain management and to policy and practice on modern slavery in supply chains.