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Planning and Managing Organizational Meetings: An Empirical Analysis of Written and Oral Communications

American University, Washington DC

Fred Niederman

University of Baltimore, MD

Organizational meetings represent one of the largest investments of human resources in public- and private-sector organizations. In spite of the many hours people devote weekly to meetings, few studies have examined the written and oral communications used in planning and managing scheduled meetings. This paper reports on a study of thirty-five organizational meetings, each from a different organization. The development and use of five primary tools for planning and managing meetings were examined, and the relationships of these tools to meeting processes were analyzed. The results were consistent with prior findings regarding the use of agendas, while offering additional information regarding the use of support documents, announcements, meeting minutes, and evaluations. Control of these tools varied by group leaders/facilitators, secre taries, and other participants; and the strongest relationships were found between the use of agendas, minutes, and support documents and the timing of meetings (duration, delays). Finally, traditional media (for example, flip charts, chalk boards, transparencies) and higher-level technologies (for example, computers, VCRs) were largely absent from meetings, consistent with the find ings of prior research.

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