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Previous research on workplace meetings identified critical design features, leader behaviors, group dynamics, post-meeting actions, and other factors which help determine the effectiveness of the meeting. But as much as the authors acknowledge that meetings may differ from each other, much of the research appears to assume that it is meaningful to talk about “the meeting” as a single, generic entity (most commonly, the regularly scheduled staff or department meeting). In fact, though, there are several common types of meetings which vary among themselves in terms of a number of measurable parameters such as structure, meeting members, meeting leader, timing and duration, and scope. It is a gratuitous assumption that what the authors know about workplace meetings based on one especially common type applies to all workplace meetings. This chapter offers a historical review of previous attempts to classify meeting types; it then overviews several common types which deviate from the standard staff meeting paradigm, including project team meetings, debrief meetings, committee meetings, site-wide meetings, shift change meetings, and crew formation meetings. In comparing these types to the staff meeting, the authors identify some of the critical differences, thereby providing a first step toward a true taxonomy of meetings.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the importance of communication that occurs just before workplace meetings (i.e. pre-meeting talk). The paper explores how four specific types of pre-meeting talk (small talk, work talk, meeting preparatory talk, and shop talk) impact participants’ experiences of meeting effectiveness. Moreover, the authors investigate the role of participants’ personality in the link between pre-meeting talk and perceived meeting effectiveness.

Data were obtained using an online survey of working adults (n=252). Because pre-meeting talk has not been studied previously, a new survey measure of meeting talk was developed.

Pre-meeting small talk was a significant predictor of meeting effectiveness, even while considering good meeting procedures. Extraversion was identified as a moderator in this context, such that the relationship between pre-meeting talk and perceived meeting effectiveness was stronger for less extraverted participants.

The findings provide the first empirical support for the ripple effect, in terms of meetings producing pre-meeting talk, and suggest that pre-meeting talk meaningfully impact employees’ meeting experiences and perceptions of meeting effectiveness. To address limitations inherent in the cross-section correlational design of the study, future research should experimentally test whether pre-meeting talk actually causes changes in meeting processes and outcomes.

Managers should encourage their employees to arrive in time to participate in pre-meeting talk. Side conversations before a scheduled meeting starts can have beneficial effects for meeting outcomes and should be fostered.

There is very limited research on the role of pre-meeting talk. The authors identify that small talk is a predictor of meeting effectiveness even after considering previously studied good meeting procedures.

A distinction must be drawn between a dismissal on the one hand, and on the other a repudiation of a contract of employment as a result of a breach of a fundamental term of that contract. When such a repudiation has been accepted by the innocent party then a termination of employment takes place. Such termination does not constitute dismissal (see London v. James Laidlaw & Sons Ltd (1974) IRLR 136 and Gannon v. J. C. Firth (1976) IRLR 415 EAT).

The purpose of this study is to provide a granular description of how organizational members construct common knowledge practices in the context of organizational meetings.

A longitudinal interpretative case study methodology was used to collect data from a US-based organization involved in an information system implementation project.

Findings revealed that during meetings common knowledge was constructed through four practices of discernment, compliance, reconstruction and expedition. Findings also revealed that these four practices were influenced by intervening conditions such as calibration challenges and scenario-sharing tools.

The findings of this study have research implications related to common knowledge construction and co-participation practices in the context of organizational meetings. This study has limitations related to statistical generalizability that have been mitigated through a holistic approach to case study methodology that favors analytical generalizability of research findings.

This study provides managers with recommendations that suggest a more strategic use of meetings as useful organizational contexts that may help construct common knowledge practices and shared understanding.

This study contributes to current theorizations of common knowledge by providing an in-depth understanding of the construction of common knowledge practices in organizations. This study also sheds some light on the strategic role of organizational meetings to manage knowledge in project-based organizational contexts.

In some fields, research group experiences gained in laboratories are more influential than the classroom in shaping graduate students’ research abilities, understandings of post-graduate careers and professional identities. However, little is known about what and how students learn from their research group experiences. This paper aims to explore the learning experiences of engineering graduate students in one chemical engineering research group to determine what students learned and to identify the practices and activities that facilitated their learning.

Ethnography was used to observe the experiences of one research group in chemical engineering. Fieldwork included 13 months of observations, 31 formal interviews (16 first-round and 15 second-round interviews) and informal interviews. Fieldnotes and transcriptions were analyzed using grounded theory techniques.

Research group members developed four dominant competencies: presenting research, receiving and responding to feedback, solving problems and troubleshooting problems. Students’ learning was facilitated by the practices and activities of the research group (e.g. weekly full group and subgroup meetings) and mediated through the interactions of others (i.e. peers, faculty supervisor and lab manager).

This study adds to the engineering education literature and contributes to the larger discourse on identifying promising practices and activities that improve student learning in graduate education.

This research explores perceptions of knowledge management processes held by managers and employees in a service industry. To date, empirical research on knowledge management in the service industry is sparse. This research seeks to examine absorptive capacity and its four capabilities of acquisition, assimilation, transformation and exploitation and their impact on effective knowledge management. All of these capabilities are strategies that enable external knowledge to be recognized, imported and integrated into, and further developed within the organization effectively. The research tests the relationships between absorptive capacity and effective knowledge management through analysis of quantitative data (n = 549) drawn from managers and employees in 35 residential aged care organizations in Western Australia. Responses were analysed using Partial Least Square-based Structural Equation Modelling. Additional analysis was conducted to assess if the job role (of manager or employee) and three industry context variables of profit motive, size of business and length of time the organization has been in business, impacted on the hypothesized relationships.

Structural model analysis examines the relationships between variables as hypothesized in the research framework. Analysis found that absorptive capacity and the four capabilities correlated significantly with effective knowledge management, with absorptive capacity explaining 56% of the total variability for effective knowledge management. Findings from this research also show that absorptive capacity and the four capabilities provide a useful framework for examining knowledge management in the service industry. Additionally, there were no significant differences in the perceptions held between managers and employees, nor between respondents in for-profit and not-for-profit organizations. Furthermore, the size of the organization and length of time the organization has been in business did not impact on absorptive capacity, the four capabilities and effective knowledge management.

The research considers implications for business in light of these findings. The role of managers in providing leadership across the knowledge management process was confirmed, as well as the importance of guiding routines and knowledge sharing throughout the organization. Further, the results indicate that within the participating organizations there are discernible differences in the way that some organizations manage their knowledge, compared to others. To achieve effective knowledge management, managers need to provide a supportive workplace culture, facilitate strong employee relationships, encourage employees to seek out new knowledge, continually engage in two-way communication with employees and provide up-to-date policies and procedures that guide employees in doing their work. The implementation of knowledge management strategies has also been shown in this research to enhance the delivery and quality of residential aged care.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss how teachers’ practice knowledge is used as a tool in a Learning Study and how teachers’ practice knowledge is challenged by using Variation Theory as a tool in the process?

The analysis is based on data from the research process in a Learning Study. The data consists of meeting notes of ten research meetings, field notes of the research meetings and from the enactment of the lessons, video recordings of the lessons and reflective notes after and between the meetings. The analysis is qualitative and the findings are described in themes.

Teachers’ practice knowledge was used and challenged in different ways in the process. This is described in five themes. Teachers’ practice knowledge was visible in the process since it enabled relevant questions to be addressed and subtle signals from students to be taken into account. It also ensured that the activities used were suitable for the students. The theory provided a focus on the object of learning and a language to talk about teaching and learning. It also challenged teachers’ assumptions about teaching and learning and allowed them to be discussed.

The paper addresses both teachers’ practice knowledge and Variation Theory in relation to a Learning Study. It focusses on how practice knowledge of teachers can be used and challenged in the same process. The perspective is from the inside, from a teacher researcher’s point of view.

The chapter defines practice approaches and considers the several ways the concept of practice has functioned in the academic and practitioner literatures. As “practice” has been a minor term in prior group studies, the next section argues that foregrounding practice in future group research is a promising direction. Not only does a practice approach privilege interactional messages, which are at the heart of communication, but foregrounding practices can help actual groups function better. A practice approach to group research can accomplish three things: (1) offer guidance about how to design and implement sensitive activities; (2) identify contextual aspects of dispersed practices such as giving information; and (3) make visible how key group norms are interactionally accomplished in nonstraightforward ways. Examples of each of these activities are illustrated.

The purpose of this paper is to review the findings from a study of teacher professional learning networks in Kenya. Specific areas of focus included network participation, network activities, network leadership, and professional impact on network members and their schools.

The research was grounded in the literature on education networks and teacher learning. The research employed a qualitative design and was implemented from September 2015–March 2017, including three two-week field trips to Kenya. Data included network records, 83 personal interviews, 4 focus group interviews, 19 observations of network meetings, and classroom observation of network and non-network teachers in 12 schools.

Network participation had positive effects on teachers’ sense of professionalism and commitment to teaching and on their attitudes toward ongoing professional learning and improvement in student learning. Teachers also highlighted network benefits for learning to use new teaching strategies and materials, responding to student misbehavior and misunderstanding, and lesson preparation.

Research constraints did not permit longitudinal investigation of network activities and outcomes.

The paper identifies challenges and potential focuses for strengthening the learning potential of network activities, network leadership, and the links between network activity and school improvement.

Prior research has investigated education networks mostly in North American and similar high income settings. This paper highlights the benefits and challenges for networks as a strategy for continuous teacher development in a low income low resource capacity context.

While new institutionalism‐inspired accounting literature has opened up new perspectives for the study of micro‐processes of change in accounting practices, little is still known about how individuals subjectively experience these processes. In this paper, the authors propose to study the role of subjectivities in the institutionalization of new accounting practices.

Based on an extension of Hasselbladh and Kallinikos' framework, the authors analyze the implementation of a new performance management and measurement system in the division of a large French public sector firm. The authors' research is based on the company's internal archives, samples of the new performance scorecard, interviews and non‐participant observation.

The system as a technique of control and related discourses and ideals formed a coherent “rationalized package” which actors had actually internalized. Still, they collectively used the new system in a very ceremonial mode and the authors' analysis identified discrepancies between actors' explicit understanding and practical experience of the system.

The authors' research suggests that studies of accounting change should further explore the complex and sometimes paradoxical nature of subjectivities at work in the adoption of new systems. Studies should combine the analysis of actors' behaviours and representations and their development over time, even though the latter longitudinal perspective is missing in the present research.

Experience encompasses more than understanding and cognitive agreement. Deliberate acceptance of systems may co‐exist with non‐deliberate reluctant behaviour.

Accounting transformation projects should reckon the role that actors' subjectivities can play in the institutionalization of new systems and practices.

The authors' research illustrates how subjectivity influences micro‐processes of accounting change. It highlights its experiential and non‐deliberate dimensions, thus complementing existing institutional research that has hitherto emphasized actors' deliberate actions and representations.