What exactly is a work meeting?

What exactly is a work meeting? What words, images, and feelings come to mind when you think of or imagine a 'work meeting'?

How we imagine what a meeting is and our thoughts on how we view the practice of ‘a meeting' not only affects our opinion of how efficient, productive or good a certain meeting is but also how the practice of 'meeting' is continuously shaped. When you thought about ‘a work meeting’ just now, did you think about digital technology, perhaps in the format of MS Teams or Zoom? With digital technology so integrated into today's meeting practices that we often don't even reflect on it, our actual meetings as well as our imaginaries of meetings look rather different today than just a few years ago.

In one of our research projects, we have been studying physical, digital, and hybrid meeting series in various organisations. For example, in a large private organisation, we have observed weekly meetings, while in a public sector organisation, we have had the privilege of following daily morning meetings for a longer period. We can see how the purpose of the meeting practice (i.e. the purpose of how we conduct meetings) is the same in these meetings - it's about moving the meeting forward. How we achieve the objective - what the agency in moving the meeting forward looks like – is, however, different.

Every day, millions of work meetings are conducted around the world. We meet in a physical meeting room at the workplace or through digital meeting services like Teams, Zoom, and Google Meet. Sometimes we also have hybrid meetings where some of us are in the same room while others participate digitally. In all these meetings, we do things in a certain way as we perceive the situation we are in as 'a work meeting' - we assume certain roles, we follow a certain structure, and so on. But what has the introduction of digital meeting technology actually done to the practice of 'conducting a work meeting' and to the sub-practices we perceive to be a part of this (such as leading a meeting or turn-taking in meetings)? These may seem like trivial questions, but when we look more closely at what is happening with meeting practices, it is anything but trivial - not least when we look at which parties largely possess the power to nurture and develop this for inclusion and effective organising so important practice.

When using digital meeting technology as a part of the meeting practice, we have access to digital hand-raising functions, written chats, and reaction functions such as a thumbs up or a heart. Therefore, how the meeting practice is shaped - and also imagined - is partly in the hands of a few global actors. Updates with new features are pushed out and installed in our hardware, sometimes without us even noticing it. A very small number of tech companies with a focus on profits and market share therefore have great power over how meeting practices develop and also how we imagine meetings should be. We have quickly adapted to the fact that many of our meetings are conducted using digital technology, but perhaps we should pause and ask ourselves how we want to shape our meeting practices without the control and limitations that tech companies impose on us? The alternatives and limitations that digital meeting technology provides us with to develop our meeting practices quickly become taken-for-granted truths about what meeting practices look like and how we define meetings, which can have far-reaching consequences for participation, inclusion, and decision-making processes in our organisations.

If you bring out the words, images, and feelings you identified when you imagined a work meeting again - what would you like tech companies to prioritise to help shape the meeting practices you want to work with now and in the future?

For any questions/comments, kindly email digma@mdu.se