Group Decision Support Systems (GDSS) changes the equation for meeting intense workflows – Traditional setups V.S. GDSS supported workflows – A Case Study

The Gothenburg Meeting Science Symposium

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Pierre Wettergren, CCGEurope (Chalmers Industrial Technology)

Abstract 
This case study is based on a risk assessment work conducted in a Swedish governmental organisation. This organisation had at the time 5’500 employees and a yearly revenue of 25 billion Swedish kronor. The risk assessment was performed by Clever Collaboration Group, experts in virtually supported work flows mainly using GDSS. In this Study a comparison was made by the traditional way of working with the possibilities that virtually supported workshops and work flows ads.
Our findings show that the total calendar time from initiation to delivered and approved Risk Assessment Report changed from 95 days to 32 days (time), the quality improved from 40% accuracy and completeness to 97% (Quality), and the total cost including travels and cost of staff and consultants decreased from €175´000 to €31’000 (Economy of Effort). (…) Read more

Time for Meetings

The Gothenburg Meeting Science Symposium

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Helen Schwartzman, Northwestern University (Anthropology)

Abstract 
In this paper I will join the topics of time and meetings to explore several issues, including why it seems to be time for meetings to be a topic of research for so many disciplines (when they have existed in the background for so long for so many investigators). Why now? For example, how is the turn toward “meeting ethnographies” in anthropology (see Sandler and Thedvall, forthcoming 2017) related to researchers’ increased interest in understanding the work and effects of multiple organizations and institutions (NGOs, corporations, state and international bureaucracies)? (…) Read more

Exploring long-term trends in meeting behavior

The Gothenburg Meeting Science Symposium

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Wilbert van Vree, University of Amsterdam (Interdisciplinary Studies)

Abstract 
This paper is an example of the idea that in order to understand present-day meeting behavior scientists have to investigate its genesis.

Development of meeting behavior
The modern meeting concept is future-oriented. It refers first and foremost to prearranged gatherings of people talking mutually and making plans and agreements concerning their common future. Meetings are about questions such as: what are we going to do, how are we going to do it and what impact has it on me, on you, on her, on them? (…) Read more

Making Sense of What is Not Said

The Gothenburg Meeting Science Symposium

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David Gibson, University of Notre Dame (Sociology)

Abstract 
A meeting is a pre-planned face-to-face encounter involving two or more people, usually with a specific purpose that gears into organizational processes. An important challenge faced by both meeting researchers and is making sense of what does not happen–arguments not made, objections not raised, stories not told. Insofar as such talk might have been consequential, its nonoccurrence is equally so, but even with excellent recordings of the meeting itself, it is generally difficult to say whether a particular person’s failure to make a thematically relevant (and even urgent) point was due to (a) ignorance of that point, (b) the lack of desire to make it, (c) the lack of capacity to seize and hold the floor long enough to give voice to it, or (d) the sense that the terms of discussion were such as to disallow it (for example, if the point is evidentiary but the discussion took an ideological or ethical turn). (…) Read more

The seduction of the event – how the innovation system comes into being through inter-organizational meetings

The Gothenburg Meeting Science Symposium

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Patrik Hall, Malmö University (Dept of Global political studies)
Erika Anderson Cederholm

Abstract 
In this paper we focus on the specific meeting form of inter-organizational events as a mode of organizing and performing a policy. The organizational context of our study is the collaboration between academia, industry and the public sector which is often referred to as the triple helix model or an innovation system. More specifically, our case is the establishment of a regional innovation system in Skåne, Sweden. One of its key activities is an annual meeting on the topic of innovation – Skåne Innovation Week. (…) Read more

Studying What Doesn’t Happen in Meetings

The Gothenburg Meeting Science Symposium

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Kathleen Blee, University of Pittsburgh (Sociology)

Abstract 
We have good ways to study what happens in meetings, but few ways to notice or understand what does not happen. This is a problem for research on meetings since their direction can be significantly shaped by implicit collective understandings of what is appropriate or plausible to consider. This paper draws on a three year ethnographic study of meetings by 60+ new and emerging activist groups in Pittsburgh that traced both what groups considered in their discussions, and what they could have considered (based on prior meetings or discussions in similar activist groups) but did not. (…) Read more

Methodological reflections from studying the agency of meetings collectively

The Gothenburg Meeting Science Symposium

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Martin Duffy, Dublin Institute of Technology (College of Business)
Brendan O’Rourke

Abstract 
An ethnographic approach was used to record the live proceedings of 63 meetings, and informed theory development on the agency of meetings collectively in an organizational setting (Duffy, 2016). Engagement as a participant observer (Pacanowsky, 1988) in a single organization, over an eighteen month period, enabled collection of discourse data from the meetings of distinct organizational groups. While meetings were originally intended as a research resource, reflection while recording the data occasioned a change in focus, moving from the meetings’ content to the meetings themselves as the research topic. (…) Read more

A Framework for Analyzing Power Dynamics at Inter-Movement Meetings in Postcolonial Contexts

The Gothenburg Meeting Science Symposium

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Johanna Leinius, Goethe University Frankfurt am Main (Cluster of Excellence “The Formation of Normative Orders”)

Abstract 
In this paper, I argue that when studying meetings between differently positioned political and social actors, the historically entrenched power relations that shape both the context of the meeting and the subjectivities of those that meet must be considered. I use the results of my doctoral thesis, in which I analyze two inter-movement encounters in Peru that aim to link indigenous, feminist, popular, and afro-Latin social movements, to show how the encounter of different social worlds at meetings can be studied through ethnographically based committed research. (…) Read more

Politics as a practice of meeting

The Gothenburg Meeting Science Symposium

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Richard Freeman, University of Edinburgh (School of Social and Political Science)

Abstract 
When we do politics, what are we doing? The purpose of this paper is to produce an account of politics based in practice, that is in human action and interaction. It places the meeting at the centre of those actions and interactions.

I begin with Arendt’s idea that politics begins in plurality, that is in the human encounter; from interactionist sociology, I take the sense that the encounter is performed. I outline what recent work in practice theory and an associated array of ethnographic studies of politics might add to this understanding. (…) Read more

Participating in versus Researching University Meetings

The Gothenburg Meeting Science Symposium

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Karen Tracy, University of Colorado Boulder (Communication)

Abstract 
As a longtime faculty member at a major US state university, I have participated in and, sometimes, run different kinds of university meetings. The kinds of meetings I have participated in have included decision making about personnel at department, college, and university levels; information-sharing and advice-seeking of upper administrators with chairs or faculty representatives regarding budget, recruitment, retention, technology, etc.; research groups with a few colleagues or graduate students; graduate committees to plan and approve students’ performance on comprehensive exams, theses, and dissertations; regularly recurring department meetings to share information and make decisions about both easy and contentions issues (e.g., (…) Read more