The science of workplace meetings: Integrating findings,building new theoretical angles,and embracing cross-disciplinary research

Abstract

The purpose of this special issue is to bring more theory into meeting science by reviewing literature, identifying knowledge gaps, developing theoretical propositions drawing from different disciplines, and providing direction for future research. The special issue will open with a general overarching review of the literature on meeting science provided by the co-editors. Each subsequent article will focus on a particular domain within meeting science, provide a focused review of the literature, identify knowledge gaps, and push towards theories that will drive future research.

Plain Text Abstract

This is the introduction to the special issue of Organizational Psychology Review that positions meetings at the core of organizations and provides a roadmap for the future science of workplace meetings.

Introduction to the special issue

Meetings are a daily occurrence in nearly every organization regardless of culture, industry, or size. As a result, vast amounts of employee time, salaries, and other organizational resources are invested in meetings every single day. Brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic, the rapid shift to virtual meetings has led to even more employee time being spent in meetings, with remarkable consequences for employee experiences at work (e.g., Karl et al., 2022). You would think that this makes meetings qualify as a key phenomenon for organizational psychologists and a focal area of research. To date however, this is decidedly not the case.

There is a growth of empirical work in the science of workplace meetings across disciplines, as indicated by recent edited volumes (Allen et al., 2015; Meinecke et al., 2020). Notably however, meeting science continues to grow without major theoretical development. This can be due to the derivation of research questions directly from organizational practice, which has merit but also comes at a price. With the exception of the occasional conceptual chapter (e.g., Scott et al., 2015), meetings research relies primarily upon other research domains to provide theories and conceptual frameworks. Given the pervasiveness and importance of meetings for the organizing process and individual, team, and organizational functioning at large (for an overview, see Lehmann-Willenbrock et al., 2018), organizational psychology faces the quest to push towards the development of meaningful theories for the growth of meeting science.

Surprisingly, although meetings are ubiquitous in contemporary organizations, the amount of research on the workplace meeting as a topic of its own is small, even across disciplines. This is despite the fact that meetings have become a daily routine for most employees, and despite the many functions and purposes tied to workplace meetings. Unlike other phenomena commonly discussed and reviewed in Organizational Psychology Review, meetings research lags behind in the development of theory, which inhibits integration of research efforts and the establishment of the topic as a key area in organizational psychology. This special issue is an overt attempt to launch research that will fill the theoretical and conceptual gap in the science of meetings. Following our call for papers that on the conceptual and theoretical basis of meeting science and necessary next steps in this exciting research area, we assembled eight papers spread across two issues of Organizational Psychology Review. The purpose of this special issue is to bring more theory into meeting science by reviewing literature, identifying knowledge gaps, developing theoretical propositions drawing from different disciplines, and providing conceptual direction for future research.

We start with an introductory position and review paper that serves as a launching point for the special issue of Organizational Psychology Review on the science of workplace meetings. In this paper, we elaborate on the key features of workplace meetings and propose a conceptual framework detailing meetings as the intersection of collaboration in organizations and a major key to organizational success. We review 253 publications on various aspects of workplace meetings against this conceptual backdrop, identify opportunities for future research, and discuss implications for everyday meeting practice in organizations. Each subsequent article in the special issue focuses on a particular domain within meeting science, provides a focused review of the literature, and pushes towards theories that will drive future research on the phenomenon of workplace meetings.

First, Gerpott and Kerschreiter conceptualize a person's meeting mindset as the individual belief that meetings represent opportunities to realize goals falling into one of three categories: personal, relational, and collective. They go on to propose that managers use specific leadership claiming behaviors in team meetings based on their respective meeting mindsets, and express these behaviors in alignment with the meeting setting (virtual or face-to-face). They explore the implications of these ideas and suggest future research directions.

Second, Meinecke and Handke offer initial theorizing on an understudied part of the phenomenon of workplace meeting, namely the meeting after the meeting (MATM). They argue that the MATM is an informal and unscheduled event that takes place outside managerial control and has potentially far-reaching consequences. They outline key defining features of the MATM that can be used to structure future research on the phenomenon of workplace meetings.

Third, Köhler and colleagues propose cognitive and behavioral scripts as a promising theoretical lens through which to capture and integrate sociocultural influences on workplace meetings. They adapt Cramton et al.'s (2021) cultural coordination scripts to formulate a theory of workplace meeting scripts, integrate prior research insights into cross-cultural differences in workplace meetings, and derive a generic prototype of a meeting script as well as examples of culturally specific meeting scripts. Their theoretical model can advance our understanding of institutionalized meeting structures and processes, as well as cross-cultural meeting breakdowns.

Fourth, Murugavel and colleagues explore creative processes in meetings by proposing a multilevel model that depicts the emergence of team creative cognitive processes from individual creative cognitions. The nature of emergence of the team creative process is detailed alongside a review of factors that influence team creativity in meetings.

Fifth, Blanchard and Allen expand meeting theory by arguing that entitativity explains how successful meetings lead to successful workgroups. Drawing upon social categorization processes and construal theory, they seek to understand workgroups as both interacting during meetings and a social category between meetings.

Sixth, Flinchum and colleagues explore the understudied one-on-one (1:1) meeting, which surprising comprise nearly half of all workplace meetings. While some meeting science insights may apply to 1:1 meetings, others may not (or may function differently) due to conceptual, theoretical, and practical differences between meetings involving dyads and larger groups. They leverage role theory and leader-member exchange (LMX) theory to consider how 1:1 meetings foster role clarity and manager-direct report relationships.

Finally, Scott and Allen propose a model of organizational meeting culture that casts work meetings as a foundational activity that shapes organizational cultures over time, influencing their distinctive, broad perceptions of what is valued, expected, rewarded and supported across the organizations, and shaping how they adapt to their external environments. Integrating research on meetings, structuration theory, and organizational culture, this paper develops the concept of meeting culture and proposes structuration theory as a framework for explaining the emergence, reproduction, and alteration of meeting cultures.

We hope that the theory development processes found in these papers will inspire new empirical research on workplace meetings. There is room for many more researchers in this domain, and the demand from organizations for new insights and evidence-based recommendations into how to meet more effectively have never been greater. It will be remarkable to see how each of the conceptual points of departure provided by the papers in this special issue will inform future inquiry into workplace meetings and help make meetings better, with profound implications for individual, team, and organizational functioning at large.