Organizational Engines for Smart Territorial Networks: The Case of an Initiative for Food Waste Reduction

High technologies, and ICTs in particular, offer crucial opportunities to ad- dress many dramatic problems implied in governing common resources and territorial systems. What are the possible new organizational forms and eco-systems that allow to better exploit these emerging opportunities? What are the key (and possibly new) manage- rial challenges implied? In this paper, we explore these issues through a longitudinal case study of a smart organization (SO) aimed at the food waste prevention through re- distribution of surplus food to associations that assist socially disadvantaged people. We find that only the cross-fertilization between research streams that have remained separat- ed so far (smart cities/regions/communities; institutional entrepreneurship; and socio- ecological/socio-technical systems) could offer a satisfying explanation for the phenome- na we observed. We conclude by suggesting that the emerging SOs are likely to be needed as organizational engines to allow positive techno-institutional innovation for the common good. This appears to be as one of the most relevant and interesting issues for organiza- tion and management studies for the years to come.