Contributing to a sustainable city by organising as a meta-organisation

Paper in proceeding, 2018

Attempts to tackle societal challenges often include diverse stakeholders. I explore meetings as a setting where individuals enact the values they believe make necessary joint work with other organisations. I present an ethnographic vignette to consider what were considered the appropriate ways of carrying out joint work. Interacting in meetings, people bring to life what they
understand as counting as appropriate contribution to a higher purpose. Considered as one practice within a network of practices, the meetings influenced the ongoing shaping of a meta-organisation with fourteen partner organisations, working together on testing electric vehicles and associated services and infrastructure ‘live’ within a city. Through reference to the
meetings, I discuss how the performing of values practices enables people from many organisations to work together to tackle societal challenges, as they engage in processes of organisational bricolage to shape coordination of collective action.