Why Meetings Matter

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

• Contents: 1 Introduction: the meeting society 2 What is a meeting? 3 The meeting landscape, its emergenceand expansion 4 Meetings as ‘doing the organisation’ (in collaboration with Vesa Leppänen) 5 Meetings and their documents 6 Escaping while attending meetings 7 Digital meetings 8 Collaborative meetings: diplomatic relations 9 Collaborative meetings: soft political power 10 The seductive meeting: network sociality and the promotion of a new meeting persona 11 Conclusion: the doings, the ‘hows’ and the ‘whos’ of meetings Index

‘Why Meetings Matter challenges our everyday view that meetings are a meaningless waste of time. The authors present an approach that allows us to study what we already think we know about meetings, focusing first on “what meetings do as a social phenomenon” and then asking, “how do [meetings] do what they do?” Drawing on a series of case studies in multiple settings, they present a timely and insightful analysis of the process of “doing meetings” in these contexts. In this way, Why Meetings Matter is an important, engaging and accessible addition to the developing field of research by anthropologists, psychologists, sociologists and historians that takes meetings seriously as events that should not be taken for granted and instead require thoughtful analysis and explanation.’