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In this introduction to the special issue of M@n@gement for the 30th anniversary of the AIMS, dedicated to complex societal problems, we examine issues of scale and non-scalability, inspired by Tsing’s work and recent calls for an ethics of care and responsiveness, thus highlighting the need to develop more care and relationality in the study of complex problems and grand challenges. This means questioning scale, recognizing the agency and value of human and nonhuman beings, prioritizing local knowledge, mutual respect, solidarity and coexistence.

Recent international trends demonstrate multilevel efforts to ‘open’ science across its whole ecosystem and lifecycle – from capturing research data through to publishing results. In social sciences, the publication process is already largely ‘open access’ or transitioning toward it. However, opening research data raises specific issues and concerns for the field. Here, we set out to understand what open research data mean for social sciences, and if, why, and how data should be made open. We argue that while the ecosystem of actors, infrastructures, standards, and principles is starting to take structure in France and abroad, there are several barriers to the process of opening data in social sciences: (1) a misperception of the motivations for opening data (i.e., focusing on risks of exercising control over researchers and their academic freedom and overlooking motivations like data patrimonialization, pooling and potential synergies, trust-building, and broader engagement), (2) a system based on competition and the dominant process of ‘starification’ in research, (3) a lack of resources and capabilities that might further exacerbate inequalities among genders, communities, institutions, and countries, and (4) the potential risks inherent to opening data and the specific constraints posed by social science data. Against this backdrop, we investigate several ways forward to operationalize not only FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable) but also CARE (Collective benefit, Authority to control, Responsibility, Ethics) principles for open data in social sciences, before going on to present M@n@gement’s new open data policy.

In this introduction, we reemphasize some key parts of meta-organization theory and their implications for understanding meta-organizations and meta-organizing processes. We clarify what meta-organizations are and what they are not and then analyze their key purposes and activities. We then present the papers of the special issue and discuss venues for future research. Although many key contributions have been made to meta-organization theory and research, there are many more things to investigate before we know as much about meta-organizations as we know about individual-based organizations.