From a clash of social orders to a loss of decidability in meta-organizations tackling grand challenges: The case of Japan leaving the International Whaling Commission
Héloïse Berkowitz, CNRS, LEST, Aix Marseille University
[email protected]
Michael Grothe-Hammer, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim
[email protected]
Meta-organizations are crucial devices to tackle grand challenges. Yet, by bringing together different organizations, with potentially diverging views on these grand challenges, meta-organizations need to cope with the emergence of contradictory underlying social orders. Do contradictory orders affect meta-organizations’ ability to govern grand challenges and if so, how? This article investigates these essential questions by focusing on the evolution and intermeshing of social orders within international governance meta-organizations. Focusing on the International Whaling Commission and the grand challenge of whale conservation, we show how over time incompatible social orders between the meta-organization and its members emerge, evolve and clash. As our study shows, this clash of social orders ultimately removes the ‘decidability’ of certain social orders at the meta-organizational level. We define decidability as the possibility for actors to reach collective decisions about changing an existing social order that falls under a collective’s mandate. We argue that maintaining decidability is a key condition for grand challenges’ governance success while the emergence of ‘non-decidability’ of controversial social orders can lead to substantial failure. We contribute to both the emerging literature on grand challenges and organization theory.
Full text available here:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/S0733-558X20220000079010/full/pdf
CitationBerkowitz, H. and Grothe-Hammer, M. (2022), "From a Clash of Social Orders to a Loss of Decidability in Meta-organizations Tackling Grand Challenges: The Case of Japan Leaving the International Whaling Commission", Gümüsay, A.A., Marti, E., Trittin-Ulbrich, H. and Wickert, C. (Ed.) Organizing for Societal Grand Challenges (Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Vol. 79), Emerald Publishing Limited, Bingley, pp. 115-138. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0733-558X20220000079010
Héloïse Berkowitz, CNRS, LEST, Aix Marseille University
[email protected]
Michael Grothe-Hammer, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim
[email protected]
Meta-organizations are crucial devices to tackle grand challenges. Yet, by bringing together different organizations, with potentially diverging views on these grand challenges, meta-organizations need to cope with the emergence of contradictory underlying social orders. Do contradictory orders affect meta-organizations’ ability to govern grand challenges and if so, how? This article investigates these essential questions by focusing on the evolution and intermeshing of social orders within international governance meta-organizations. Focusing on the International Whaling Commission and the grand challenge of whale conservation, we show how over time incompatible social orders between the meta-organization and its members emerge, evolve and clash. As our study shows, this clash of social orders ultimately removes the ‘decidability’ of certain social orders at the meta-organizational level. We define decidability as the possibility for actors to reach collective decisions about changing an existing social order that falls under a collective’s mandate. We argue that maintaining decidability is a key condition for grand challenges’ governance success while the emergence of ‘non-decidability’ of controversial social orders can lead to substantial failure. We contribute to both the emerging literature on grand challenges and organization theory.
Full text available here:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/S0733-558X20220000079010/full/pdf
CitationBerkowitz, H. and Grothe-Hammer, M. (2022), "From a Clash of Social Orders to a Loss of Decidability in Meta-organizations Tackling Grand Challenges: The Case of Japan Leaving the International Whaling Commission", Gümüsay, A.A., Marti, E., Trittin-Ulbrich, H. and Wickert, C. (Ed.) Organizing for Societal Grand Challenges (Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Vol. 79), Emerald Publishing Limited, Bingley, pp. 115-138. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0733-558X20220000079010