Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

Students need to understand how the interplay of ideas, personalities, and environment-the ecology-of a meeting contributes to productivity and satis faction in group process. Only when the ecology is right can the meeting work. To address that ecology explicitly, instructors should help students assess their prior experience in small groups. In a classroom exercise, student teams answer one of a set of questions about meetings: 1. How participants know when a meeting is productive (or not); 2. How they know when warm hospi tality has been extended (or not); 3. What happens before, during, and after meetings that generates broad enthusiasm—or produces apathy. A class period spent on such discussion helps convince students of the need to proactively apply effective meeting management principles in their own workplace. Key words: Group process, meetings, participation, hospitality, enthusiasm

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Bandura, A. (1977). A social learning theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Barley, J.R. , Saparito, P. , Kressel, K. , Christensen, E. , & Hooijberg, R. (1997). A model of reflective pedagogy. Journal of Management Education, 21(2), 155-167.

Daft, R. , & Wiginton, J. (1979). Language and organization. Academy of Management Review, 4 (2),179-191.

Doyle, M. , & Straus, D. (1976). How to make meetings work. New York: Jove Books.

Drucker, P. (1995). Managing in a time of great change. New York: Truman Talley.

Henderson, G. (1994). Cultural diversity in the workplace: Issues and strategies. West-port, Connecticut : Praeger.

Herzberg, F. (1982). The managerial choice (Rev. Ed.). Salt Lake City: Olympus.

Kayser, T.A. (1990). Mining group gold. El Segundo, CA: Serif.

Kolb, D.A. (1984). Experiential learning: Experience as the source of learning and development. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

10.

McAndrew, F.T. (1993). Environmental psychology. Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole.

11.

Munter, M. (1998) Meeting technology. Business Communication Quarterly, 6(2), 80-87.

12.

Newstrom, J. , & Scannell, E. (1980). Games trainers play: Experiential learning exercises . New York: McGraw-Hill.

13.

Peters, T. (1994). The Tom Peters seminar. New York: Vintage.

14.

Porter, L.W. , & McKibben, L.E. (1988). Management education and development: Drift or thrust into the 21st century? New York: McGraw Hill.

15.

Samuelson. P.J. (1990, May 14). What good are B-schools? Newsweek, p. 49.

16.

Scannell, E. , & Newstrom, J. (1983). Even more games trainers play: Experiential learning exercises. New York: McGraw-Hill .

17.

Shrage, M. (1995). No more teams! New York: Currency/Doubleday .

18.

Stafford, T. (1995). That's not what I meant! Grand Rapids. MI:Zondervaan.

19.

Tannen, D. (1994). Talking 9 to 5. New York: William. Morrow.

20.

Tannen, D. (1998). The argument culture. New York : Random House.

21.

Whetton, D. , & Cameron, K. (1995). Developing management skills (3rd ed.). New York: Harper Collins .

Teaching Students to Enhance the Ecology of Small Group Meetings

Abstract

Get full access to this article

References