MIT Sloan Management Review Article on Strategizing Across Organizations

Businesses, nonprofits, policy makers, and others frequently find it helpful to come together in networks of organizations to tackle large-scale challenges, such as COVID-19, extreme weather events, humanitarian disasters, or supply chain disruptions. But devising strategy in such meta-organizations is far different from strategizing within a single organization — and much more difficult. A new approach to collaborative strategy can help leaders in individual organizations work with others to achieve both shared and individual strategic priorities.

Meta-organizations (a term coined by Göran Ahrne and Nils Brunsson) can range from tightly organized and well-established trade groups like the International Air Transport Association to loosely structured, short-lived groups like the U.K.’s Brexit Business Taskforce.

About the Author

Rafael Ramírez is professor of practice and director of the Oxford Scenarios Programme at the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School. Trudi Lang is a senior fellow in management practice and director of the Oxford Collaborative Strategy Lab at Saïd Business School. Matthew Finch is an associate fellow at Saïd Business School. Gail Carson is chair of the Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network (GOARN) and director of network development, ISARIC, in Oxford’s Pandemic Sciences Institute. Dale Fisher is a senior consultant for the Division of Infectious Diseases within the Department of Medicine at National University Hospital in Singapore, a professor of medicine at National University Singapore, and past chair of GOARN.

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