Mental constructs, metaphors, and paradigms are now seen as important in explaining how organizations work and what they do (Huff 2005; Fiol 2002; Lant and Shapira 2000; Spender and Eden 1998; Walsh 1995). We look at how the interpretive system of multistakeholder organizations can be described with regards to three different approaches of the social economy. Each one is mobilized to feed an analytical grid of multistakeholder governance organizations as to “why” they exist, “what tensions” take part in their dynamics, and “how do they build compromises” among different categories of stakeholders. Economics approaches to the study of nonprofit organizations – namely the public good theory (Weisbrod, 1977, 1988), the consumer-control theory (Ben Ner, 1986), the trustworthiness theory (Hansmann, 1980), and the supply-side theory (James, 1987; Rose-Ackerman, 1996) – are used to see why multistakeholder structures exist. Socio-economic approaches are utilized to understand the complexity of the social economy through the common characteristics of the various organizations (Desroche, 1983; Demoustier, 2001), the dualism that characterizes their organizational form (Fauquet, 1964) and their mission (Lévesque, 2005), the rules by which these tensions are regulated (Vienney, 1980, 1994), and how organizations evolve in contingent environments (Desforges, 1980; Malo & Vézina, 2003). Solidarity-based economy approaches (Eme & Laville, 1994; Dacheux & Goujon, 2002; Evers & Laville, 2004) give a base for understanding the hybridization of logics (Gardin, 2006), the democratic deliberation that takes place in the public space in order to reach and agree upon collective goals (Dacheux, 2003).