The key features of workplace meetings: Conceptualizing the why, how, and what of meetings at work

Abstract

Given the focal role that group and team meetings play in shaping employees’ work lives (and schedules), the scarcity of conceptual and empirical attention to the topic in extant organizational psychology research is a major oversight that stalls scientific understanding of organizational behavior more broadly. With the explosion of meetings in recent years, in part due to the COVID-19 pandemic, some even wonder why organizational psychology has not already figured out meetings from both a science and practice perspective. The purpose of this paper is to synthesize the extant literature on the science of workplace meetings and sort the works by identifying the key features of the meeting phenomenon. The five key features of workplace meetings identified include Leading, Interacting, Managing Time, Engaging, and Relating. We couch these features within a larger framework of how meetings are the intersection of collaboration in organizations and indispensable to organizational success. Against this conceptual backdrop, we reviewed a total of 253 publications, noting opportunities for future research and discussing practical implications. Plain Language Summary Given the focal role that group and team meetings play in shaping employees’ work lives (and schedules), the scarcity of conceptual and empirical attention in extant organizational psychology research is a major oversight that stalls scientific understanding of organizational behavior more broadly. With the explosion of meetings that has occurred in recent years, in part due to the COVID-19 pandemic, some even wonder why organizational psychology has not already figured out meetings from both a science and practice perspective. The purpose of this paper is to review the literature on the science of workplace meetings by identifying the core features of the phenomenon and sorting the extant literature along these features. The five core features identified include leading, interacting, managing time, engaging, relating. We couch these features within a larger framework of how meetings are the intersection of collaboration in organizations and a major key to organizational success. Against this conceptual backdrop, we reviewed a total of 253 publications, noting opportunities for future research and discussing practical implications. We conclude our review with an overview of the special issue on workplace meetings, which is an overt attempt to launch research that will fill the theoretical and conceptual gap in the science of meetings.

Virtual meeting fatigue: Exploring the impact of virtual meetings on cognitive performance and active versus passive fatigue.

“…Prior literature in meeting science suggests that several meeting characteristics can affect attendee fatigue (see Allen & Lehmann-Willenbrock, 2022, for a review). Therefore, we controlled for perceived meeting-specific demands, including mental, physical, and temporal demands, as well as the effort put into executing tasks during the meeting.…”

“…Prior literature in meeting science suggests that several meeting characteristics can affect attendee fatigue (see Allen & Lehmann-Willenbrock, 2022, for a review). Therefore, we controlled for This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.…”

“…The widespread adoption of virtual work has drastically changed the way we interact and collaborate, with virtual meetings becoming the new norm for many organizations (Allen & Lehmann-Willenbrock, 2022; Hill et al, 2022). While virtual meetings have the advantage of allowing for remote work and reducing travel time, many knowledge workers have reported feelings of fatigue after participation in virtual meetings (Bennett et al, 2021; Shockley et al, 2021).…”

“…Responding to Allen and Lehmann-Willenbrock (2022) call for research on meeting modalities and well-being, this study aims at building a more nuanced understanding of meeting-related fatigue that knowledge workers may experience during virtual and face-to-face meetings. While previous studies on virtual meeting fatigue have mainly relied on subjective fatigue assessments, our research employs a unique approach by integrating cardiac monitoring (heart rate variability [HRV]) with subjective ratings to measure the active and passive fatigue of 44 knowledge workers during 382 real-life virtual and in-person meetings.…”

“So, Why Were You Late Again?”: Social Account’s Influence on the Behavioral Transgression of Being Late to a Meeting

“…People interact in multiple settings every day, and we can capture some of that interaction within the workplace. Meetings specifically provide context for key features of collaboration among workers including interaction and managing time [15]. Weiner's attributional theory of interpersonal behavior includes multiple stages that conjointly explain individuals' affective, behavioral, and motivational responses after experiencing or witnessing an interpersonal offense.…”