Obstacles to collective action during a crisis: A meta-organizational perspective

Abstract

Meta-organizations form to advance collective action. But collective action can be more difficult to coordinate for meta-organizations comprising governmental agencies or sovereign states, with system-level objectives often conflicting. These challenges can be more binding during a crisis, where the responses called for are outside of the original reason for the meta-organization's existence. We advance a framework for conceptualizing meta-organizations that focuses on both internal attributes and external perceptions and suggests how each may help or hinder meta-organization influence during a crisis. Using as a case study the response of the European Union (EU) to COVID-19 and, specifically, to air travel restrictions at the outbreak of the pandemic, we show how meta-organizations can have difficulties in responding expeditiously to crises, particularly when encountering contradictory system-level goals. We argue that meta-organizations must plan for crises during less turbulent times, developing the processes that contribute to the gradual creation of new system-level goals.