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The purpose of this paper is to establish the influences of the colours red and blue on perceived well being, social cohesion and productivity in complex real life work conditions during regular meetings.

In total, seven regular government teams held seven regular meetings in red, blue and reference meeting rooms. In literature it is often mentioned that red is a warm and blue a cool colour. To be able to test the warmth and coldness effects the authors have amplified the warm and cold qualities with light colour and colour of the table top desk. The employees were asked to complete questionnaires concerning perceived well being, social cohesion and productivity. In total, 52 subjects completed three questionnaires, at the start, the end and two or three days after the meeting. Data were analysed with SPSS 16.

The findings did not show any effects of the red and blue environment on perceived well being, social cohesion and productivity. The authors assume the processes in real life work situations are too complex to measure influences.

The research focuses on individual perceptions and did not measure actual well being, social cohesion and productivity.

Practical implications are that statements frequently mentioned in literature concerning influences of red and blue might be not valid in real life meeting settings. New ways of testing the impact of colours should be reconsidered. Because lab situations are too simplified and artificial, the authors suggest testing influences of colour in an isolated setting in relation to art.

The originality of this research concerns testing colour influences in complex real life work settings, such as meetings.

Managers spend a great deal of time in meetings making decisions critical to organisational success, yet the design aspects of meetings remain largely understudied. The purpose of this paper is to elaborate on the potential impact of one critical design aspect of meetings – namely, whether a decision to be taken (or the meeting in general) was scheduled or not – on the use of distributed information, information elaboration, conflict, speed of decision making, and, ultimately, decision-making effectiveness.

The research presented in this paper combines a literature review with empirical data obtained from questionnaires and direct observation of decision making meetings on organisational issues in a hospital. One meeting was scheduled, the other two were unscheduled. A second questionnaire was administered 12 months after the respective decision making meetings to explore and evaluate the efficiency of the decisions made and their implementation.

This paper suggests that a scheduled meeting with a shared agenda of all decisions to be taken may induce decision makers to form opinions upfront at the meeting, with these opinions eventually serving as sources of conflict during group discussion. Because of the nature of the conflict generated, these meetings are more likely to run long and to not deliver the expected outcomes.

The study contributes to the debate on group decision-making processes by examining the effect of meeting scheduling on information elaboration and conflict in real-world decision-making settings. Although robust evidence has supported the existence of relationships between information elaboration, conflict, and decision-making effectiveness, previous studies have mainly focused on the effects of these processes during scheduled meetings and experimental settings. The findings of the present study show the effect of meeting scheduling on decision-making effectiveness in real-world settings.

To speak of collective bargaining as a collaborative process seems a contradiction. Since 1935 when collective bargaining was institutional‐ized in the Wagner Act, the process has assumed that the disputing par‐ties are enemies, competing for scarce resources with different objec‐tives. This article explains the implementation of a new theory of col‐lective bargaining which encourages truthfulness, candor, and the acknowledgement of shared goals and avoids the negative and self‐defeating power plays of the adversarial collective bargaining process. As a result of this process, grievances in the observed company declined from 40 per year under previous contracts, to 2 in 18 months under the current contract; anger and hostility have been nearly eliminated; and there is a real spirit of cooperation present in the plant.

One of the most valued management skills is the ability to function effectively in such small group decision‐making settings as meetings. Nevertheless, studies admit that little is definitely known about what makes meetings effective, so that meeting leaders often have to operate on assumptions or conflicting evidence even as they recognize that the move toward team‐based organizations has created a special need for meeting facilitation skills. Presents techniques for running meetings based on the results of experience gained working as a meeting consultant at the international headquarters of an insurance corporation in the northeastern USA (referred to as Alifo). Covers a 12‐month period during which 58 managers, supervisors, and executives participated in a meeting analysis survey, attended training sessions, and evaluated meeting simulations. Based, in addition, on meeting observations, minutes, and transcripts, communication reports, and interviews with company managers, several conclusions were reached about the meeting process, leadership behaviors, and group participation at Alifo.

Employees at all organizational levels spend large portions of their work lives in meetings, many of which are not effective. Previous process-analytical research has identified counterproductive communication patterns to help explain why many meetings go wrong. This study aims to illustrate the ways in which counterproductive – and productive – meeting behaviors are related to individual work engagement and emotional exhaustion.

The authors built a new research-based survey tool for measuring counterproductive meeting behaviors. An online sample of working adults (N = 440) was recruited to test the factor structure of this new survey and to examine the relationships between both good and bad meeting behaviors and employee attitudes beyond the meeting context.

Using structural equation modeling, this study found that counterproductive meeting behaviors were linked to decreased employee engagement and increased emotional exhaustion, whereas good meeting behaviors were linked to increased engagement and decreased emotional exhaustion. These relationships were mediated via individual meeting satisfaction and perceived meeting effectiveness.

The study findings provide a nuanced view of meeting outcomes by showing that the behaviors that people observe in their meetings connect not only to meeting satisfaction and effectiveness but also to important workplace attitudes (i.e. employee engagement and emotional exhaustion). In other words, managers and meeting leaders need to be mindful of behavior in meetings, seek ways to mitigate poor behavior and seek opportunities to reward and encourage citizenship behavior.

This study shows how good and bad meeting behaviors relate to employee perceptions of meeting effectiveness and individual job attitudes. The authors develop a science-based, practitioner-friendly new survey tool for observing counterproductive meeting behavior and offer a juxtaposition of good and bad meeting behaviors in a single model.

This paper aims to examine the effects of age on counteractive team meeting behaviors (e.g. complaining). Forgiveness is included as a potential buffer against these behaviors. A multilevel model is developed to test individual and team level age effects.

A total of 313 employees nested in 54 teams completed a forgiveness questionnaire and were videotaped during regular team meetings.

Multilevel modeling revealed that both individual age and average team age predicted counteractive team meeting behavior. Team level age diversity was linked to decreased counteractive behavior. Forgiveness moderated the negative link between individual age (but not team average age) and counteractive behavior.

This is the first study examining age effects in the context of counteractive meeting behavior. Although the authors' findings need to be substantiated in further research, they show that older team members engage in significantly more counteractive communication – forgiveness can help alleviate this effect.

Teams with older team members should be sensitized to avoid counteractive behavior. Moreover, team composition should target high age diversity. Managerial interventions should also aim to facilitate forgiveness in the work environment, especially among older team members.

Research on dysfunctional team meeting behavior is sparse, and the role of age effects has not been examined in this context. The authors identify a significant link between age and counteractive meeting behavior. This multilevel model shows differential effects of individual age, team average age, and age diversity on counteractive communication. Furthermore, a buffer against these dysfunctional behaviors is identified: forgiveness.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the discursive practices used when the agenda for a consultation process was negotiated in a contract meeting. The paper illustrates the role of sensitivity in meaning making practices, that is, how displays of sensitivity were intertwined with topic development.

The paper offers an in‐depth analysis of naturally occurring conversation in a meeting between a consultant and two client managers. The audio‐recorded data is analyzed by utilizing methodology introduced and developed in the traditions of Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis (CA).

The authors show how both the consultant and the clients displayed markers of sensitivity when introducing various meaning potentials relevant to the topics under discussion, and how they eventually ‘negotiated’ meanings through formulations and reformulations of the topics.

The findings suggest that indirect and complex discursive practices were functional in that they afforded the participants the possibility to exhibit prospectively threatening meaning potentials of the issues under discussion, while suspending a more thorough topic penetration. The study sheds light on the importance of the details at the early stages of a consulting relationship and the consultant's specific role at the beginning.

The paper illustrates real life practices in process consultation. This sort of data is seldom used in research.

More and more organisations are using teams to solve problems, plan for the future and improve products, processes and services. One method of enhancing group effectiveness is to use a facilitator. Facilitators, however, need to be trained in order to accomplish their role effectively. This can only be achieved successfully if trainers are aware of the competencies and skills needed to undertake the facilitation process. Explores the facilitation process and presents both the general and specific competencies that are essential for facilitation. General competencies are those that are vital no matter what type of group is meeting. Specific competencies, on the other hand, are those that are distinctive to the level of group development. Groups that are highly experienced and well‐developed will require the facilitator to have more sophisticated skills than groups that are less‐developed.

The paper seeks to develop a framework for sales and operations planning (S&OP) that is based on previous literature and company interviews. It is designed to help managers understand how effective their S&OP processes are and how to progress to advanced stages.

The S&OP literature, is reviewed and the results of a number of company interviews are presented. These lead to a new framework, with descriptions of each stage, and to implementation insights for managers.

After highlighting key dimensions for establishing a firm's S&OP maturity on a five‐stage framework and, with the use of this framework, exploring in a preliminary way the relationship between firm size or process type (job shop, batch flow, continuous flow, etc.) and its degree of S&OP plan integration, little apparent relationship was found. However, the data suggest that business processes are enablers of S&OP plan integration, but that information technology is not clearly so.

The results are based on a thorough review of the literature and on 15 in‐depth company interviews. Because the sample size is small, the results should be considered to provide only preliminary insights.

Managers can use the framework to assess their S&OP process maturity. To advance to higher S&OP integration, managers should focus on leadership of business processes that can enable effective S&OP plan integration. These processes include organizational structure, meetings and collaboration across functional areas, and performance measurements. Information technology tools may also be enablers, but they do not appear to be the primary drivers.

The framework separates business processes from information processes. It is quite extensive and therefore provides managers with an indication of the maturity of their S&OP processes. Also presented are insights into an intuitive, albeit challenging, process for advancing through the stages of maturity. Finally, a perspective on the future of S&OP integration is suggested that is focused on optimizing profits rather than myopically maximizing revenues or minimizing costs.