Why Meetings Matter

Everyday Arenas for Making, Performing and Maintaining Organisations

Patrik Hall, Professor of Political Science, Department of Global Political Studies, Malmö University, Malin Åkerström, Professor Emerita, Department of Sociology, Lund University and Erika Andersson Cederholm, Professor of Service Studies, Department of Service Studies, Lund University, Sweden

This innovative book argues that meetings are a crucial feature of modern organisations, demonstrating that, contrary to popular belief, meetings are what define, represent and maintain organisations.

Through an in-depth analysis of ethnographic case studies, Patrik Hall, Malin Åkerström and Erika Andersson Cederholm illustrate the inner workings of meetings, exploring phenomena such as meeting chains, meeting escapes, the digitalisation of meetings, subtle meeting diplomacy, and seductive business events. This book emphasises how negotiations, collaborations and power dynamics are performed during meetings, making meetings the most fundamental working map of organisational hierarchies. Ultimately, Why Meetings Matter highlights the crucial importance of meetings in an increasingly collaborative professional working landscape.

Offering a cutting-edge approach to a longstanding social phenomenon, this book will be of great interest to academics, students and researchers in the fields of sociology, political science and organisation studies. Including ethnographic studies with practical case-based applications, it will appeal in particular to office-based professionals as it provides new insights into a taken-for-granted workplace activity.