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The purpose of this paper is, first, to expose an integrated manufacturing performance measurement and meeting system implemented to focus the organization on value streams and, by doing it, to improve performance, and, second, to analyze the results obtained.

This paper is based on an exploratory case study carried out at Delphi Diesel Systems (DDS) plant in Sant Cugat (Spain).

The integrated manufacturing performance measurement and meeting system implemented by DDS Sant Cugat resulted in being very successful and appropriate to obtain the established objectives: focus the organization on value streams; and, by doing it, to improve performance, particularly the overall equipment effectiveness.

Considering the limited amount of research on the subject this kind of exploratory research is considered to be appropriate. The main limitation is that a single manufacturing plant was analyzed. Even though the characteristics of the plant and the problems addressed are common and, in consequence, it can be thought that the experience is replicable, further research should be conducted to verify it.

For the management community, this paper provides a new way of designing and using manufacturing performance measurement systems.

The presented case confirms previous works stating the importance of how performance measures and meetings are used and the need of involvement of the whole organization. The joint planning of the performance measures and the meeting system that has been presented had not previously been analyzed by the literature.

The Worldwide Web has recently emerged as a highly effective technology to permit individuals to exchange and share information from around the globe. This paper investigates the applicability of the Web‐based technology to the support of team meetings in Korean corporations. We first examine key cultural characteristics of Korean enterprises as they relate to the way the firms conduct team meetings, and discuss a few design issues in the context of the characteristics. We argue that the organizational culture of Korean firms calls for a merger of text‐based electronic meeting support with video conferencing capability if meetings are to be productive. Ultimately, we envision an integrated team support system that meets the needs of Korean firms for collaborative tasks regardless of the time and location dimensions.

To explain how genres structure temporal coordination in virtual teams over time.

The first year e‐mail archive of a small distributed software development start‐up was coded and analyzed and these primary data were complemented with interviews of the key participants and examination of notes from the weekly phone meetings.

In this paper, it is found that members of a small start‐up organization temporally coordinated their dispersed activities through everyday communicative practices, thus accomplishing both the distributed development of a software system and the creation of a robust virtual team. In particular, the LC members used three specific genres – status reports, bug/error notifications, and update notifications – and one genre system – phone meeting management – to coordinate their distributed software development over time.

The study confirms the various suggestions from prior virtual team research that structuring communication and work process is an important mechanism for the temporal coordination of dispersed activities. In particular, an attempt has been made to show that the notions of genre and genre system are particularly useful to make sense of and analyze how such structuring actually occurs over time.

In this paper, the research focus is shifted from how a given set of temporal coordination mechanisms affect team performance to how coordination mechanisms emerge, are stabilized, and adapted over time. It is also shown how the notion of genre may be used to shed light on the practices through which temporal coordination is accomplished in geographically distributed teams.

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.

Electronic meeting facilitation (e‐facilitation) continues to be a critical success factor in the use of information technology to support face‐to‐face collaborative work. Yet researchers and practitioners continue to struggle to understand the subtleties and difficulties in the application of meeting facilitation techniques in the ‘electronic’ context. To clarify that understanding, this paper develops a new theoretical framework that examines how technology interacts with human facilitator behavior in an electronic group meeting. This framework, The Dualities of E‐Facilitation, is composed of two dualities: the Duality of Computer and Human Interaction, and the Duality of Routine and Intuitive Actions. The framework emerged from an analysis of the e‐facilitation behaviors of newly trained face‐to‐face electronic meeting facilitators.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the behavior of decision makers in portfolio management meetings on innovation projects and to study decision‐making behavior at these meetings.

The paper is based on the case‐study approach; a theoretical framework is derived from sociology to direct the analysis of a portfolio management meeting. Four factors explain the behavior of decision making: the portfolio models as defined by organizational rules; issues related to the organizational context; a tendency to behave as others expect and to make appropriate decisions; and organizational learning processes.

The paper finds that the set of rules for conducting portfolio meetings was only partially followed. The identity of decision makers was not as calculating actors, but was shaped and influenced by four things: the formal system and rules, observations of others, the organizational context, and organizational learning. Systems other than the portfolio management systems compete for the decision makers' attention, as multiple criteria are manifest. Signals from top management influenced the decision makers' interpretations of the organizational context and framed the decision making. As learning showed decision makers what behavior was acceptable, this behavior seems to be further enforced. Decision making thus becomes more a matter of making appropriate decisions than of optimal or rational decision making.

The study is limited to a single case study in one organization. Replications among other samples are needed to validate current findings.

This paper presents a framework for understanding how portfolio decision making is shaped and molded through appropriate decision making rather than by following the normative calculative approach. In practice, the decision maker must deal with multiple factors and criteria that make it difficult to carry out a traditional rational decision‐making process. Still, the functions of decision making meetings can extend beyond decision‐making. They may also serve as social occasions and as occasions for interpreting possible actions and sharing that information, making it possible to make appropriate decisions. Decisions are thus a construct rather than a calculative outcome.

Group meetings are a daily component of most businesses but are often considered as unproductive or even a “waste of time” by many participants. Over the past decade, computer‐based systems called group decision support systems (GDSSs) have been developed to improve meetings, and studies have shown that the systems can increase their efficiency and effectiveness as well as the group members′ satisfaction with them. Describes this new technology with its advantages and disadvantages and shows how two corporations used GDSSs to improve their meeting productivity.

Today's requirements concerning successful learning support comprise a variety of application scenarios. Therefore, the development of supporting software preferably aims at modular design. This article discusses requirements regarding flexibility of e‐learning systems and presents important principles, which should be met by successful systems. The purpose of this paper is to achieve a highly flexible system as follows: first of all, the system itself should be capable of easily being integrated into other systems. Second, the approach should allow easy integration of new components, respectively, existing resources without the need to adapt the whole system.

Guided by the results of previous projects and by various experiences in online education the importance of modular structures of an effective architecture as well as for the system usage were discovered. Accordingly, existing e‐learning systems were examined and some deficiency regarding support of synchronous learning activities were found.

The architecture of the Meeting Room Platform (MRP) is introduced as an example implementation of synchronous communication and collaboration systems. In addition to fulfilling explained flexibility requirements, it is configurable in a way so that the user can choose a set of services he wants to provide in online meetings.

With aforementioned aspects of flexibility in mind, the concept of the MRP system differs from existing systems and constitutes a new approach in designing synchronous e‐learning environments. Finally, various use cases as described in this article show the benefit of this approach more detailed.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the Last-Planner-System’s impact on project cultures in terms of partnering.

A case study was performed using multiple data gathering approaches. The project cultures of three projects not applying the Last-Planner-System were compared with three projects that apply the Last-Planner-System. In total, 30 participants were involved in the study. Semi-structured interviews were held and analysed by applying qualitative content analysis. Also, the “organizational culture assessment instrument”, which belongs to the “competing values framework”, was used by means of an online survey.

The Last-Planner-System leads to increased levels of mutual understanding and control about the tasks and issues of the other parties. This detailed overview leads towards a more distinguished evaluation of the trustworthiness of individuals. This does not necessarily lead to a partnering project culture.

The contribution to research is that higher levels of transparency and mutual understanding do not necessarily lead to a high level of trust. Rather, transparency could be seen as a controlling mechanism that leads to better-founded estimations about the trustworthiness of others in the project.

We all could make a list of what's wrong with most meetings. What's said doesn't reflect what people are thinking. People with good ideas don't get heard. Contradicting your boss is bad politics. Precious time is lost in endless debates. What if you could just press a button to put an end to the wrangling? What if everyone's ideas were automatically added to the agenda? Welcome to the brave new world of Electronic Meeting Systems.