Toward a Strategic Perspective of Meeting Participation

Abstract

Participation in meetings is a multifaceted process. Meeting members must consider individual and meeting goals when creating their messages, as well as a host of other context and resource factors. The purpose of this essay is to create a framework through which to consider meeting member contributions. Pulling from literature in impression management, resource conservation, and meeting science, the essay introduces a strategic perspective of meeting participation and categorizes five meeting participation types. Implications of this perspective on future meeting research are considered.

Plain Language Summary

Over the years, meeting attendance has become a larger and larger portion of employee workload. Meetings are salient locations of work, where group members interact in a way that advances the organizational goal. Since meeting interactions showcase group members’ preparation and competence, meeting participation is important not only to the purposes of the group but also to the reputation and credibility of the group members. The theoretical framework in this essay showcases the factors that influence how group members choose to participate in meetings. Group members must balance the need to maintain a good impression during meeting interaction while also weighing how much energy to use given the myriad responsibilities that members must juggled. Different meeting characteristics (e.g., virtual meetings and group size) may influence how members try to maintain good impressions and conserve energy. The intersection of these member goals creates five ways that individuals participate in meetings: full participation, nonparticipation, pretend participation, token legitimacy, and off/on participation. Meeting members may use one or several of these approaches during the course of a meeting, depending on how they balance their impression management and resource conservation goals.