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Meetings are ubiquitous in organizational life and are a great source of frustration and annoyance to many employees in the workplace, in part due to counterproductive meeting behaviors (CMBs). CMBs include engaging in irrelevant discussion, complaining about other attendees, arriving to the meeting late, and other similar, disruptive behaviors. Consistent with conservation of resources theory, the purpose of this paper is to examine the potential resource draining effect of CMBs on two key workplace attitudes/behaviors, employee voice, and coworker trust.

The authors used Amazon’s MTurk service to recruit a sample of full-time working adults from a variety of industries who regularly attend meetings. Participants completed a survey with items relating to CMBs, trust, voice, and meeting load.

The authors found that CMBs were indeed negatively related to both employee voice and coworker trust. Further, both of these relationships were even more negative for those who had fewer meetings (i.e. meeting load as a moderator).

The results of this study suggest that behavior in meetings may spill over and impact employees in other areas of their work life, perhaps harming other important work-related outcomes (e.g. performance). The cross-sectional nature of the sampling strategy is a limitation that provides opportunities for future research as discussed.

The practical implications are rather straightforward and poignant. Managers and meetings leaders should seek ways to reduce CMBs and promote good meeting processes generally.

The current study is the first to overtly investigate CMBs in workplace meetings and connect them to meaningful, non-meeting-related, outcomes. Further, the study shows the usefulness of conservation resources theory for explaining the dynamic processes that occur for meeting attendees.

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.

The purpose of this study is to propose a taxonomy of meeting purpose. Meetings are a workplace activity that deserves increased attention from researchers and practitioners. Previous researchers attempted to develop typologies of meeting purpose with limited success. Through a comparison of classification methodologies, the authors consider a taxonomy as the appropriate classification scheme for meeting purpose. The authors then utilize the developed taxonomy to investigate the frequency with which a representative sample of working adults engaged in meetings of these varying purposes. Their proposed taxonomy provides relevant classifications for future research on meetings as well and serves as a useful tool for managers seeking to use and evaluate the effectiveness of meetings within their organizations.

This study employs an inductive methodology using discourse analysis of qualitative meeting descriptions to develop a taxonomy of meeting purpose. The authors discourse analysis utilizes open-ended survey responses from a sample of working adults (n = 491).

The authors categorical analysis of open-ended questions resulted in a 16-category taxonomy of meeting purpose. The two most prevalent meeting purpose categories in this sample were “to discuss ongoing projects” at 11.6 per cent and “to routinely discuss the state of the business” at 10.8 per cent. The two least common meeting purpose categories in this sample were “to brainstorm for ideas or solutions” at 3.3 per cent and “to discuss productivity and efficiencies” at 3.7 per cent. The taxonomy was analyzed across organizational type and employee job level to identify differences between those important organizational and employee characteristics.

The data suggested that meetings were institutionalized in organizations, making them useful at identifying differences between organizations as well as differences in employees in terms of scope of responsibility. Researchers and managers should consider the purposes for which they call meetings and how that manifests their overarching organizational focus, structure and goals.

This is the first study to overtly attempt to categorize the various purposes for which meetings are held. Further, this study develops a taxonomy of meeting purposes that will prove useful for investigating the different types of meeting purposes in a broad range of organizational types and structures.

Changing language ideology and the decreased popularity of overt feminism suggest that aspiring female managers may be less influenced than senior women managers by the gender of the speaker in evaluating whether specific communication strategies are effective and probable. The purpose of this paper is to investigate this issue.

A total of 255 second‐year female management students evaluate strategies for the same workplace dilemmas as senior women managers (Barrett).

For short‐ and medium‐term dilemmas students, like senior women managers, regard masculine communication strategies with a feminine element as effective. They are less influenced by the speaker's gender than senior women managers in evaluating the strategies' probability. But when seeking promotion, students avoid some strategies they consider effective, and believe men would use. Students' confidence as communicators affects their personal choice of strategy.

The paper investigates a limited number of dilemmas and sought information about a limited number of demographic factors, limiting the results' generalizability. Nevertheless, it suggests future women managers could learn from their senior counterparts if they want to advance at work. Future research should investigate whether future male managers' reactions to these dilemmas are similar to women students and senior managers, and whether scenarios using female dyads yield similar results. Cross‐cultural extensions of the research are also possible.

This is the first study comparing aspiring and senior women managers' reactions to classic workplace communication problems. The findings show similarities between aspiring managers and their senior sisters, but also differences which could affect aspiring managers' career success.

With the global adoption of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs), it has become increasingly important for educators to develop a responsive curriculum where future event practitioners understand, value and implement sustainability as a core component of meeting and event management. The purpose of this paper is to explore the viewpoints of industry to embed sustainability as part of developing a Meeting and Event Management curriculum that is responsive to industry needs, and in so doing, contribute to quality education (SDG4).

Qualitative data were generated from 10 key informant interviews amongst top-level meeting and event professionals. Open questions elucidated industry viewpoints to develop content for a Meeting and Event Management curriculum at Advanced Diploma level in South Africa. Content analysis and data interpretation revealed key topics that guided the embedment of SDGs in the curriculum as knowledge, skills, values and attitudes.

Curriculum content was linked to six specific, corresponding SDGs, namely: good health and well-being; quality education; decent work and economic growth; industry, innovation and infrastructure; climate action and partnerships for the goals.

The paper contributes valuable industry insights into academic educators concerned with responsive curriculum development in the field of meeting and event management by outlining how SDGs can be integrated as competencies and learning outcomes in a tertiary qualification.

Meetings are a necessary part of work. The purpose of this paper is to focus on how power distance in meetings affects emotional labor, including whether leader-member exchange (LMX) serves as a moderator for this relationship. It is hypothesized that power distance in meetings would lead to higher levels of emotional labor in meeting attendees, and that higher levels of LMX would make this relationship even stronger.

The authors used a panel sample of full-time working adults from a variety of industries who regularly attend meetings. Participants completed a survey with items related to power distance, emotional labor, and LMX. Hypotheses were tested using moderated regression.

Findings reveal that power distance between the meeting leader and attendees does relate positively to emotional labor, both surface and deep acting. In addition, LMX moderates this relationship for deep acting, but not for surface acting indicating that when high levels of both power distance and LMX exist, meeting attendees will engage in more deep acting.

The results of this study suggest that meeting leaders influence the behavior of attendees through their perceived power and relationship with the attendees. The power distance measure and cross-sectional nature of the sampling strategy is a limitation that provides opportunities for future research.

The practical implications focus on meeting leaders, how they can help meeting attendees make meetings successful by expressing their true authentic emotions.

The current study is one of the first to focus on the power distance present in meetings related to emotional regulation through the social comparison theory. In addition, the current study investigates how LMX can serve as a moderator in this relationship.

Leadership can positively affect the work environment and health. Communication and dialogue are an important part in leadership. Studies of how dialogue is valued and handled in first‐line leadership have not so far been found. The aim of this study is to develop a theoretical understanding of how first‐line leaders at hospitals in western Sweden value and handle dialogue in the organisation.

The study design was explorative and based on grounded theory. Data collection consisted of interviews and observations. A total of 11 first‐line leaders at two hospitals in western Sweden were chosen as informants, and for four of them observation was also used.

One core category emerged in the analysis: leaders' communicative actions, which could be strategically or understanding‐oriented, and experienced as equal or unequal and performed equitably or inequitably, within a power relationship. Four different types of communicative actions emerged: collaborative, nurturing, controlling, and confrontational. Leaders had strategies for creating arenas and relationships for dialogue, but dialogue could be constrained by external circumstances or ignorance of the frameworks needed to conduct and accomplish dialogue.

First‐line leaders should be offered guidance in understanding the consequences of consciously choosing and strengthening the communication component in leadership.

The positive valuation of dialogue was not always manifest in practical action. One significant consequence of not using dialogue was that information with impact on organisational efficiency and finances was not communicated upwards in the management system.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to a better understanding of the role of learning in performance measurement.

The authors develop a theoretical framework combining workplace learning theory with purposes of performance measurement. The authors elaborate this framework empirically by identifying critical incidents from a case set within a context containing a broad range of different performance measurement activities. Finally, the authors discuss the results and the possible implications for using the theoretical framework in order to better understand facets of learning regarding the design of performance measurement.

Workplace learning theory provides a deeper understanding of how the mechanisms of performance measurements support control or improvement purposes. The authors propose a tentative framework for learning as a driver for performance measurement and four facets of learning are identified: reproductive, rule-oriented, goal-oriented and creative learning.

The empirical material is limited to the healthcare context and further studies are needed in order to validate the findings in other settings.

The authors argue that all managers must consider what kind of learning environment and what kind of learning outcomes best serve the interests of their organisation. Purposeful and carefully designed organisational arrangements and learning environments are more likely to induce intended learning outcomes.

Previous connections between the fields of “performance measurement” and “workplace learning” often lack any deeper conceptualisations or problematisations of the concept of learning. In this paper, the authors provide a more nuanced discussion about the process of learning in performance measurement, which may provide a basis for further research and scholarly attention.

New Ways of Working (NewWoW) refers to a novel approach for improving the performance of knowledge work. The purpose of this paper is to seek innovative solutions concerning facilities, information technology tools and work practices in order to be able to “work smarter, not harder.” In order to develop work practices toward the NewWoW mode there is a need for an analytical management tool that would help assess the status of the organization’s current work practices and demonstrate the impacts of development initiatives. This paper introduces such a tool.

Constructive research approach was chosen to guide the development of the Smart ways of working (SmartWoW) tool. The tool was designed on the basis of previous knowledge work performance literature as well as on interviews in two knowledge-intensive organizations. The usefulness of the tool was verified by applying it in four organizations.

SmartWoW is a compact questionnaire tool for analyzing and measuring knowledge work at the individual level. The questionnaire consists of four areas: work environment, personal work practices, well-being at work and productivity. As SmartWoW is a standardized tool its results are comparable between organizations.

SmartWoW was designed a pragmatic managerial tool. It is considered possible that it can be valuable as a research instrument as well but the current limited amount of collected data does not yet facilitate determining its usefulness from that perspective.

This paper makes a contribution to the existing literature on knowledge work measurement and management by introducing an analytical tool which takes into account the NewWoW perspective.

The working environment has a considerable potential contribution to make to improving quality within an organisation. The introduction of the concept of total quality means that the role of the working environment in generating organisational success cannot be ignored any longer. Planning office space needs to consider the individual in context in terms of personal requirements as well as work requirements. The three design aspects which are crucial in determining quality are: (1) recognising different individuals′ needs; (2) finding more appropriate forms of expression which encourage people to communicate and work together, and (3) providing tools which extend people′s capacity for work.