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

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.