2. Meta-Organization as an Important Empirical Phenomenon in Contemporary Societies

In this chapter, I describe meta-organizations as an important empirical phenomenon. They are qualitatively and quantitatively important. They are also extremely varied in size, governance form, types of members, membership segmentation, mandate perimeters, but also purposes, activities and logics. These families and family resemblances only begin to show how diverse meta-organizations can be as an empirical phenomenon. What they do clearly show is that meta-organizations, beyond their incredibly high diversity (and therefore dissimilarities), can also present with some commonalities or similarities. This hints at the analytical value of meta-organizations as a concept, the topic of the next chapter.