Theorising meta-organisations’ role in addressing societal problems: Hybridising institutional logics to tackle modern slavery

Modern slavery is increasingly recognised as a supply chain risk to both workers and firms. Neither corporate efforts nor market-based regulation have 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-organisations – offers both the scale and scope needed to change supply chain behaviours. Yet meta-organisations and how they effect change remain underexplored and under-theorised. Through analysis of archival material and 44 interviews with public sector buyers and purchasing consortia managers, we construct two case studies of meta-organisations. These cases reveal rich insights into meta-organisations’ 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 hybridising 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-organisations and institutional logics in the context of supply chain management, and to policy and practice on modern slavery in supply chains.