The entitativity underlying meetings: Meetings as key in the lifecycle of effective workgroups

Abstract

As more employees work in different locations, meetings become the primary opportunity for workgroup interactions. We explore how workgroup entitativity develops within successful meetings and grounds positive employee and group outcomes between meetings. Social identity theory and self-categorization processes explain how entitativity develops during meetings and activates workgroup identification between meetings. Further, construal level theory, which establishes that physical and psychological distance are positively related, affects entitativity and social identity for dispersed and hybrid workgroups. We propose that entitativity develops in meetings through interactions, co-presence, leader behavior, and meeting size. Between meetings, the frequency of self-categorization into a workgroup identity maintains and even increases workgroup entitativity. Further, task interdependence, informal interactions, and time between meetings affects frequency of self-categorization and, thus, employees’ workgroup entitativity between meetings. We conclude that meetings serve as the primary formal occasion in which workgroup entitativity can be maintained or repaired for optimal workgroup performance. Plain Language Summary Successful meetings lead to productive workgroups but we do not know why or now. We suggest that entitativity (a person's perception of a “group”) develops during successful meetings and explains productive workgroups. Specifically, when people start to work, they can either think of their group or themselves. If they think about their group, a process follows such that the employee comes under the influence of all of the positive characteristics of their group. Because successful meetings influence how people think about their group, entitativity explains successful groups.

Cohesion Is Lower in Virtualized Collaborations: A Comparison of Teams’ Network Structure

“…However, our study’s focus on the virtualization of collaboration projects during the COVID-19 pandemic suggests a narrower emphasis. Studies of effects of COVID-19 on (inter-)organizational collaborations consistently find that the use of established communication media, such as email, telephony, and databases, persisted without notable changes in usage after the contact restriction were set in place, whereas face-to-face meetings were replaced by video-conferencing (Blanchard & Allen, 2022; Karl et al, 2022; Whillans et al, 2021). Although commonly used video-conferencing software solutions differ to a certain extent and there is scope for different usage practices (Breuer et al, 2020; Karl et al, 2022), the characteristic of virtualization can be specified sufficiently to facilitate a more comprehensive examination of its impact on network formation.…”

“…When it does happen, for instance, as project partners wait for the other participants of a video conference to arrive, the situation provides only weak incentives for interactions. Of course, project partners may seek to compensate for this lack of opportunities through planned virtual encounters (Blanchard & Allen, 2022; Karl et al, 2022; Whillans et al, 2021). However, due to the explicit purpose of such planned encounters, it seems unlikely that they can fully compensate for an absence of serendipitous encounters.…”

How Are We Similar? Group Level Entitativity in Work and Social Groups

“…These differences may be theoretically important, particularly for organizational scientists who are interested in understanding why some workgroups are strong and productive while others are not. One difference is that organizational scientists conceive of groups as fully interactive workgroups and teams whereas social psychologists also include much larger groups like ethnicity or nationality (cf., Blanchard & Allen, 2022). Organizational scientists should not simply apply social psychology theories to workgroups without understanding these differences in group conceptualizations.…”

“…We suggest that the differences in how entitativity develops in work and social groups are based on self-categorization. Self-categorization is the process by which people cognitively sort themselves into groups (Blanchard & Allen, 2022; Hogg & Reid, 2006; Hogg & Terry, 2000; Turner & Reynolds, 2012). Generally, self-categorization occurs when individuals perceive similarities with others.…”

“…Second, members of a new book club may perceive the potential of a group, but only after a period of time will they perceive the book club as a stable group of engaged book readers. Finally, employees may not know why they were invited to attend a meeting until the leader clarifies the attendees' shared work goals (cf., Blanchard & Allen, 2022). In these examples, it is only when other people (at the bus stop, in the book club, or at the meeting) share a perception of groupness (i.e., entitativity) that the entity becomes an intersubjective group.…”