Search results

Introduction Consider a hi‐fi loudspeaker manufacturing company acquired on the brink of insolvency by an American multinational. The new owners discover with growing concern that the product range is obsolete, that manufacturing facilities are totally inadequate and that there is a complete absence of any real management substance or structure. They decide on the need to relocate urgently so as to provide continuity of supply at the very high — a market about to shrink at a rate unprecedented in its history.

Effective team management can be the difference between success and failure in business. This monograph provides some practical ideas based on experience to enable you, the manager, to develop your team and improve its performance. The Team Management Systems approach to developing effective team operations is referred to and the principles involved are described, including linking, exploring, controlling, organising and advising.

The purpose of this paper is to examine meetings as a form of meta-practice and investigate their role related to management control of innovation development.

This research draws on case studies of two biotechnology firms operating in pharmaceuticals and medicine, which represent different contexts regarding the uncertainty and complexity of innovation development.

The study suggests two distinct roles of meetings in the context of innovation development: meetings as regulating and ordering; and meetings as a resource. In the first role, meetings serve as a regulative mechanism that brings together multiple elements of control into a system. Meetings as a meta-practice regulate and order by bracketing elements of innovation in time and space, rendering the innovation process more manageable and allowing actors to handle the complexity of knowledge. In the second role, meetings are used as a resource, sporadically intervening in the ongoing activities of innovation projects. The study explains how these two roles relate to the uncertainty and complexity of innovation development and have different implications for management control.

The study challenges the instrumental view of meetings by taking a closer look at their structuring potential in the organization. Understanding the roles of meetings provides another perspective on the functioning of management control and opens new avenues for studying the practices of control and decision-making.

This paper aims to examine how remote (i.e. global, regional or divisional) management accountants communicate in interpersonal contacts with operational managers when trying to exert influence on them.

An ethnographic field study focusing on budgetary control meetings between regional management accountants and operational managers is used as the basis for a micro-level analysis of situated face-to-face interactions and communicative influence tactics.

Remote management accountants mainly use soft rather than hard influence tactics. They, furthermore, employ what is referred to as “panoramic knowledge” gained explicitly from their structurally as well as physically removed “meta-positioning” to suggest certain measures to operational managers that have proved successful in other units and – by doing so – try to exert influence on these managers. Moreover, they use information that they gain in their position in between senior and operational managers by acting as “double agents” – that is, informing operational managers about senior managers’ focus as well as making transparent to operational managers that they will inform senior management about specific operational matters. By doing so, they try to prompt operational managers to address these issues. Additionally, strengthening their verbally articulated suggestions, as “minute takers” they are able to document their suggestions by moving from spoken to a more binding written text. Through these purposeful and rather unobtrusive tactics, remote management accountants try to take influence on operational managers without generating their resistance.

The paper shows how remote management accountants (as staff members) can skillfully turn their apparently powerless position within the organization into a source of strength to exert influence on operational managers.

This chapter describes two change efforts involving participatory action research within the pharmacy operations division of Kaiser Permanente. Focus is on a parallel learning mechanism that has been used to support communications and change during two large-scale information technology interventions. It begins with basic background information on participatory action research in organizations. Since the case setting is Kaiser Permanente, the chapter provides some information on the U.S. healthcare industry context and then shifts to Kaiser’s communication forum, a learning mechanism that has been in place for 35 years. Cognitive, structural, and procedural aspects of the learning mechanism are explored, and the chapter features interviews with some of the key forum players. Both in the forum’s infancy and in its current more institutionalized state, the pharmacy organization has been in crisis. Implications for the use of parallel learning structures on a long-term basis to support long-term participatory action research are explored along with contributions to theory on insider/outsider action research.

Meetings called/attended by US business people in the course of their duties are examined in the light of: time spent, productiveness or otherwise, theoretical and actual productiveness, functional group differences, comparison of male and female attitudes, comparative weakness of finance groups in achieving productive meetings, the need for training to inculcate meeting skills, the cost in wasted money of ineffective meetings, the correlation between managing meetings and personal advancement/self‐perception, the need for subordinates, not just managers, to learn meeting skills. The implications of these factors are seen to be that meetings are important to any organisation; managed effectively, they increase productivity and, managed poorly, they cost American business a fortune.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically analyze the relationship between institutional investors research meeting and performance of companies being researched.

Using empirical research method, this study designs and conducts an empirical research according to empirical research’s basic norms. Thus, the authors acquire needed and credible empirical data.

By analyzing the empirical data, there is a significant positive effect between institutional investors research meeting and the earnings per share of company being researched. Improvement in the level of the research meetings of the institutional investors strengthens the external supervision of management, alleviates the information asymmetry between management and shareholders, improves the management efficiency of the company and ultimately increases the performance of the company. When the performance of a company is better, we can find that the role of II research meetings is more significant. In addition, II research meetings are better able to improve the performance of state-owned enterprises.

This study empirically analyzes and verifies the roles of institutional investors research meeting in improve the performance of the company being researched. The authors expand the channel of institutional investors research behaviors to improve the performance of listed companies by strengthening the supervision and restraint of management behavior. Additionally, via a reverse study, it is found that the situation of the researched company itself is also one of the factors that determine the results of institutional investors research meetings.

How do shareholders know if corporate managers are doing their jobs? This paper aims to propose using top management team meetings as a measure of the behavior of company managers. More meetings may indicate effective effort by top management to enhance company performance. Alternatively, more meetings may reflect procrastination and decision paralysis.

Using top management team meeting data publicly disclosed by Indonesian companies during 2010–2017, this study tests for these hypothesized relationships between top management team meeting frequency and firm performance.

This study found that top management team meetings are positively related to firm performance, indicating that more meetings do represent more effective effort by top management teams. Further analysis shows that only firms that consistently hold more meetings than their peers perform better, particularly during periods of poor performance.

This study highlights top management team meetings as a valid signal of management effort and suggests there should be louder calls for disclosure of these types of executive performance metrics around the world.

Summarizes the findings of a survey dealing with business meeting practices in giant Korean corporations. Describes both meeting practices in very large Korean firms and also top Korean executives′ feelings about those meetings. Korean executives consider adequate preparation, clearly‐set objectives, agreement on follow‐up actions, and starting on time as the most important elements for a successful meeting. However, these elements are not being implemented adequately. Business meeting practices in Korea have room for improvement, both in terms of effectiveness and efficiency. There is also a huge disparity between the perception of the need for training in meetings management and the implementation of such training. Executive development programmes in Korea should certainly include far more training in meetings management.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the management and benefits of meetings so as to draw conclusions on their effectiveness in organizations given the increasing discontent about their set up.

The study was a cross-sectional survey, data were collected from 325 respondents in 22 service organizations in Kampala, using a questionnaire and participant observations; the instrument was tested for reliability and analysis done using descriptive and statistical techniques.

The key finding was that policy regarding meetings and reasons for convening them jointly account for 57 percent variations in the benefits organizations have. The way meetings are conducted was found to have no significant effect, contrary to anecdotal evidences. The internal and external contextual factors did not affect the effectiveness of meetings. In general meetings have benefited organizations but the discontent on how they are managed is still high.

The lack of analytical and local literature on the study variables limited this study. There were also methodological challenges especially operationalization of variables, sampling and choice of respondents.

The study underpins policy as a key factor for effectiveness of meetings; the literature supported this account. For governance boards there is need to review policy on meetings; and for managers, the paper emphasizes the need for improving how meetings are convened, conducted and the follow up action. The study has provided rich ground for scholars; the authors have extended the debate on meetings, brought into view an African context and made it possible for further studies.

Meetings involve many people in the organization and affect entire operations. There are critical personal factors that are pertinent in the outcome of meetings. The finding that personal factors do not have a significant relationship with effectiveness of meetings should not be applauded till further investigations and conceptualization is done in similar contexts. There are social implications on if meetings are not managed well as the authors have established like time wastage, employee motivation and poor management among others.

Many papers that the authors accessed on meetings were on organizational experiences from western countries, the authors have made an original focus on Uganda and underpinned the debate on management development in Africa. The authors have also examined and provided an empirical basis for understanding effectiveness of meetings using key factors of policy, preparation, conduct and contextual factors.