1Introduction: Conceptualization and classification of meetings

Meetings are highly intricate social interactions involving complex linguistic activities in the smallest spaces, and this complexity is one of the reasons why they have a bad reputation. They are often regarded as tedious, boring, and sometimes even as superfluous and a waste of time. On the other hand, it is well-nigh impossible to imagine companies without them. In fact, meetings are among the key defining elements of any corporation. From its discourse-analytical perspective, the present chapter will argue that it is precisely this Janus-faced character that is constitutive of well-functioning organizations (cf. Section 5 and Menz 2000).

The so-called self-help literature defines meetings above all as goal-oriented exploratory encounters of three or more persons who pursue a common aim (e.g., Henkel 2007; Liraz 2013). This definition may sound sensible enough; however, it is inadequate and reflects a very limited understanding of communication. Indeed, such simplistic conceptualizations contribute to the negative evaluation of meetings mentioned above. In contrast, a sociolinguistic and discourse-analytical perspective, as adopted in this overview, can help to question how individuals ascribe stereotypes to people and processes (e.g., to chairpersons, to participants’ supposedly gendered behaviour, and to meetings as a genre) and, by adding a critical eye, assist in avoiding reifying and disguising assumptions.

A sociolinguistic, discourse-analytical point of view conceptualizes meetings as being extremely complex, involving a high number of tasks and goals that have to be taken into consideration. In most cases, meetings belong to forms of internal corporate communication (unlike most negotiations; see Chapter 5) and have all of the following characteristics (Domke 2008), among others:

The number of striking similarities that can be identified among meetings across all organizations (companies, universities, NGOs, etc.) seem to outweigh perceived differences. Hence, from a discourse-analytical perspective it makes sense to speak of meetings as a separate genre within spoken linguistic activities in business (Angouri and Marra 2010).

The rest of the chapter examines various key concepts for business meetings and is structured as follows. Section 2 describes consensus-based strategies of leadership and decision-making that may not conform to the stereotypical expectations of business communication. In contrast, Section 3 will discuss research that focuses on conflict and disagreement. Section 4 is devoted to the important question of how gendered (and, in some ways, also ethnicized) workplaces are increasingly becoming the focus of attention in existing research. Section 5 turns to the concept of efficiency, which, from a managerial perspective, lies at the core of any activity. In meetings, however, it must be seen as a double-edged sword since apparent inefficiency may turn out to be of great value in other respects. The chapter will end by highlighting some research gaps that are of interest for future (interdisciplinary) research (Section 6). As the role of the chairperson is a defining feature of meetings, it will be examined in all sections.

As a simple search in the research database Scopus yields an astounding 111,000 hits for the keyword business meetings, the focus of the present chapter must be narrowed. It is therefore limited to research concerned with the analysis of naturally-occurring speech events, and excludes studies relying solely on self-reporting techniques like questionnaires and interviews. Moreover, all the literature discussed here involves at least some close micro-analysis of spoken discourse and references to discourse-analytic approaches. A further, necessary restriction excluded studies on intercultural meetings, despite the fact that they represent a key area of research into business meetings (e.g., Angouri 2010; Bilbow 2002, 2007; Kell et al. 2007; Louhiala-Salminen and Charles 2008; Poncini 2002, 2004; Rogerson-Revell 2007; Ronkainen 2009; Spencer-Oatey 2010; Spencer-Oatey and Xing 2005; Zhu 2011). However, this topic will be discussed in Chapter 11.

2Leadership, decision-making, and consensus

In addition to sharing information and assigning work and tasks, decision-making is a central function of meetings. A substantial part of the relevant literature is therefore concerned with the function of leadership in meetings, and in particular with the role of the chairperson. This role is usually associated with certain rights and powers. As a rule, it is up to the chair not just to open and close meetings, but also to introduce new agenda items, to change the topic and to sanction inappropriate conduct.

Because of their function, chairs have powerful linguistic resources at their disposal to control the course of a meeting. Their rights to set the agenda or to change topic and focus are all realized through specific communicative activity types. Additionally, chairs have preferential rights to establish “sequential conditioning” [sequentielle Konditionierung] (Müller 1997: 165; author’s translation), which allows them to allocate tasks and assign work. They can also position themselves as a superior through communicative voluntarism, that is, by taking the power to act largely of one’s own volition (Schmitt and Heidtmann 2002: 184−185), and so create a hierarchy. This can be realized in several different ways (e.g., by defining and organizing the work to be done, designing the relationship level, constructing facticity even when a statement contradicts the facts, and organizing the communicative space).

However, the chair’s actions are inconceivable without corresponding interactive activities on the part of the other participants. Communicative voluntarism from the chair has its counterpart in communicative self-restraint (Schmitt and Heidtmann 2002: 185) from the other participants, that is, refraining voluntarily from possible communicative activities, thus accepting the existence of a hierarchy. Motivations for communicative self-restraint may be self-defense (i.e., not compromising one’s own position by dissenting), protection of one’s superior (e.g., preserving her/his face in public) or the integration of recent recruits. Showing a readiness to agree, passing up opportunities to speak, and silence are among the techniques used to enact self-restraint (Nielsen 2013).

The communicative practices of both chairs/leaders and participants/subordinates may be regarded as constitutive of meetings or, rather, meetings are enacted and co-constructed through these interactional activities. In the majority of cases, face-threatening acts are avoided, as a basic ability to cooperate must be preserved (Holmes and Stubbe 2003; but cf. Section 3). Despite the chair’s communicative power, consensual decisions and consensus-building activities seem to be the preferred form of interaction in meetings.

Wodak, Kwon, and Clarke (2011) describe five discursive strategies which facilitate consensus building. The first is termed bonding (Wodak, Kwon, and Clarke 2011: 603) and is aimed at increasing group identity. Among the typical linguistic resources used in this context are personal pronouns (e.g., “I”/“we”). The second strategy is summarized under the label of encouraging. It is characterized by various linguisticpragmatic means, such as soliciting opinions, supporting existing opinions, offering positive feedback, back-channelling, using questions rather than orders (Wodak, Kwon, and Clarke 2011: 604), and silence from leaders (cf. also Menz 1999). The third strategy is called directing and can be understood as the opposite of “encouraging”. It is characterized by closed questions, interruptions, and the direct speech acts of request and clear expression of the chair’s own position without inviting more discussion. Interestingly, within a critical discourse-analytic frame, Wodak, Kwon, and Clarke interpret formulations (Heritage and Watson 1980) (such as summaries and reformulations by the chairs) as directive strategies, in contrast to Barnes (2007), who operates within a conversation-analytic framework and views them as “facilitative”. This discrepancy can be seen as a telling example of how utterances are bound by context and of the interpretative power of the theoretical framework used. Wodak, Kwon, and Clarke’s fourth strategy, modulating, is used to build or increase a commitment to consensus, and draws mainly on the linguistic device of argumentation by invoking the topos of threat (e.g., a need for an urgent decision in order to avoid negative consequences) (Wodak, Kwon, and Clarke 2011: 605). The fifth strategy, re/committing, consists of moving from discursive consensus to (joint) action. With this strategy, leaders tend to refer to organizational values and obligations. Owing to its linking function, it is seen by the authors as the crucial strategy for consensus building.

These overall strategies are supported and realized by specific linguistic means at the moment of transition from one topic to the next in order to achieve agreement. Research in Conversation Analysis has identified strategies such as the commonly used formulations referred to earlier (Heritage and Watson 1980), especially the so-called “candidate pre-closings” in the form of “gists” and “upshots”, in order to facilitate the move to the next topic (Barnes 2007). These establish or record the shared understanding of a topic and are a preparatory step to decision-making. Resistance, on the other hand, causes new discussions to be opened and decisions postponed (Kwon, Clarke and Wodak 2009: 293).

The preference for consensual decisions and consensus-building activities may reflect the fact that a more egalitarian leadership style potentially leads to more durable consensus than a hierarchical, authoritarian one (Wodak, Kwon and Clarke 2011: 607−611). The same applies to the area of problem solving. Although this shows many interactive features of competitive linguistic behaviour (interruptions, overlappings, frequent turn-taking), problem solving – perhaps surprisingly – mostly proceeds in a semantically congruent, that is, facilitative way (Angouri and Bargiela-Chiappini 2011: 218). Three distinct steps can be observed in this process: the definition of the problem (“what is the problem?”), the allocation of the problem to a specific person (“whose problem is it?”), and the solution to the problem. Contrary to what might be expected, not only the last, but all three steps can be interactively negotiated (rather than just assigned or defined by the chair). Hence, expertise and status may play a decisive role in meetings (though not necessarily in the organization as a whole). Collective humour is frequently observed at the end of each step and can be seen as an action that reinforces team-building (Dannerer 2002b; Holmes 2000b).

Finally, a considerable amount of linguistic work on leadership has been conducted from the perspective of gender studies (Bakar 2005; Baxter 2012; Holmes and Marra 2011; Mullany 2007, 2011; Schnurr and Mak 2011). However, to avoid redundancy, it will be discussed in Section 4.

3Conflict, power, and politeness

Although businesses are, as a rule, hierarchically structured organizations, a variety of studies show that consensus, and face-saving verbal activities, are generally preferred to the authoritarian implementation of decisions from the top down (cf. Section 2). This means that conflicts, dissent, and/or disagreements do emerge in meetings and need to be dealt with interactively. Yet conflicts need not be judged negatively per se, as they often help to develop and clarify problems.

Indeed, along with informing participants and assigning tasks, Dannerer (1999: 106-145) identifies disagreement as an essential part of internal meetings. Again, the chair plays a significant role. Holmes and Marra (2004) identify four strategies used by chairs in dealing with potential conflicts. They also show that these strategies are interactively co-constructed and that they are used with sensitivity to the context of the respective community of practice (Eckert and McConnell-Ginet 1992), the type of meeting and the relative seriousness of the issue(s) involved. Furthermore, they emphasize that the “hero manager”, which is the most widely propagated model of leadership in the business management literature (Holmes and Marra 2004: 440), does not appear in the analysis of authentic meetings.

The four strategies found can be placed along a continuum from the least to the most confrontational as follows: conflict avoidance, conflict diversion, conflict resolution through negotiation, and conflict resolution through authority. The first strategy is closely connected to agenda issues. Competent leaders can use formal or organizational reasons (“we have to get on”) to move onto the next item on the agenda and thus create some distance from a conflict or pre-emptively evade it. The second, very effective, strategy is to divert the potential dissent or conflict to another forum outside the ongoing meeting (Holmes & Marra 2004: 445−447). This strategy is used in two specific contexts: (a) when further preparatory action by one or more team members is needed and (b) when disagreement arises between experts about issues that were not part of the meeting’s agenda (cf. also Dannerer 1999). Overt disagreement can thus be kept away from the rest of the group. The third strategy – working through conflict – was only identified by the authors in connection with serious problems. It includes the negotiation of consensus among participants, which can then serve as a basis for further decisions. Here, the authors observed two phases: first, the identification and exact formulation of the area of disagreement, a task that is usually achieved by joint interaction and not unilaterally; and second, “negotiating the discussion through a group consensus” (Holmes and Marra 2004: 448), which tends to be a cyclical process. The fourth strategy – imposing a decision – is rather uncommon (Holmes & Marra 2004: 454) and was observed only in less serious contexts.

Given the need for further cooperation, continuing the meeting and managing dissent are of particular importance (cf. also Meier 1997: 267−268). Linguistic discourse analysis has paid special attention to dissent, which is a highly complex concept, as it can take very different forms. One is a process of escalation characterized by systematic patterns (Dannerer 1999). At the beginning of a dissent sequence, disagreement is usually presented in a mitigated manner, but modal expressions such as “may”, “could”, tag questions, and so on are frequently lost during the negotiation process, giving fresh momentum to the conflict. As the disagreement intensifies, linguistic features of conflict such as overlaps, interruptions, rapid turn-taking, high volume and long monologic phases of argumentation become more frequent, and coalitions may form among participants, further exacerbating these features (cf. Müller 1997: 197−230). In contrast, another form of dissent takes a much more constructive approach, such as the one Wasson (2000) noted in her study of American business meetings. She found that sequences of mild disagreement often show face-saving strategies, with the interlocutors exercising caution in order to achieve and maintain consensus. In this case, disagreement is most often expressed through mitigation, for instance by downplaying knowledge and certainty; incorporating components signifying agreement into disagreement; joking; and allusion (Wasson 2000: 471).

Signaling a willingness to compromise (possibly to the extreme of adopting the opponent’s position) is another activity that fulfills an essential function. Formulating reversals of opinion and helping others to articulate their own reversals can be seen as consensus-fostering turn patterns specifically designed to accommodate dissent (Wasson 2000: 469–470). Should the meeting not be chaired, a participant who has little involvement in the dispute often assumes agency and continues the meeting once the conflict has been settled or discussion of the issue postponed. Topic transition is also relatively common. However, it is difficult for outsiders to determine whether such developments mean that conflicts are actually resolved or merely constitute strategic speech acts (like temporary self-restraint) (Dannerer 1999: 146).

Further conflict-management mechanisms are joking and humour, which have an almost paradoxical function in this context. On the one hand, laughter can be used by superiors as “repressive humor” (Holmes 2000b; Mullany 2004) to mitigate requests and thereby gain their subordinates’ co-operation and compliance. This activity type occurs especially frequently in the course of assigning work (Dannerer 2002b). Expressing a proposal humorously allows a manager to make it, while retaining the option of retracting it on the grounds that the proposal was not meant seriously, thus saving face (Dannerer 2002b: 111). On the other hand, a subordinate who laughs when no joke has been made may be expressing resistance to a specific work assignment. This type of laughter is often ignored by superiors or chairs.

Despite their frequency and apparent utility, though, face-saving strategies and consensus seeking are not always the dominant activity types. Especially in bluecollar environments, severely face-threatening control procedures are used by chairs if their interests or interaction goals are at risk. While hierarchical structures are generally present only latently (cf. Section 2, as well as Schmitt and Heidtmann 2002), they can be pushed into the interactive foreground when needed. Such linguistic practices, systematically described by Müller (1997: 185−289), include emphasizing the organizational structure (e.g., references to one’s own status and the hierarchical conditions). They may also explicitly address the negative side of the relationship between superiors and subordinates. Among these, Müller counts belittling others and/ or excluding, denigrating, degrading or downgrading them, as well as emphasizing knowledge differences/asymmetries. Furthermore, leaders may downgrade the relevance of others’ contributions, question the validity of their perspectives, or even try to reinterpret their contributions to serve the leaders’ own interests. In addition, managers can turn potentially controversial new topics into “known” ones by using specific categorization strategies. In this way, the new topics are incorporated into the company’s routines and can then be delegated to the persons responsible (Nielsen 2009: 26−31). A similar goal is achieved by euphemisms, the use of which, as a rule, is initiated and established by the chair (Nielsen 2009: 35).

The strategies described above all have high face-threatening potential and are therefore a particularly clear expression of power asymmetries in business contexts. Employees have access to considerably fewer means of conflict resolution. Among them, humour and laughter are repeatedly described as a viable response (Dannerer 2002a, b; Rogerson-Revell 2007). However, as emphasized in Section 2, consensual agreements are more robust and sustainable, as they encounter less passive resistance.

The high face-threatening potential of specific activities is also an expression of asymmetric politeness requirements. Schnurr, Marra, and Holmes (2007) rightly point out that standards of politeness depend not only on position and status, but are also “ethnicized” and, depending on the context, adapted and reshaped by members of a community of practice. This adaptation itself also seems to be ethnically asymmetrical. For example, Maori New Zealanders are frequently bi-cultural, and are therefore familiar with non-Maori standards of politeness, and can adapt to these accordingly. In contrast, non-Maori New Zealanders may not be equally aware of the differences in politeness norms, and may thus unintentionally offend their Maori colleagues more frequently by not adapting to Maori concepts of face-saving activities (Holmes, Marra, and Schnurr 2008).

Other studies suggest that cultural differences in terms of indirectness and politeness in disagreeing are largely stereotypical constructions as they can hardly ever be directly observed. For instance, disagreeing, even with superiors, is as frequent in Chinese companies, which are perceived as belonging to a particularly “indirect” culture, as in Western ones. In fact, depending on the context, disagreement may be uttered even more bluntly than in comparable Australian companies (Yeung 2000). These two brief examples indicate how cultural factors add to the complexity of analyzing communication in business meetings. For reasons of space, these factors cannot be examined in detail here, but will be dealt with in Chapter 11.

4Gender issues in business meetings

In recent years, the number of studies on gender issues at the workplace has increased rapidly. This is doubtless largely due to the increase in the number of women in the working world. In particular, the systematic discrimination against women in business organizations has long been a topic of discussion and has been described using the metaphor of the glass ceiling (first mentioned by Morrison, White, and van Velsor 1987). Even today, only 25% of all management positions around the world are held by women, and women are still paid significantly less than men for the same work (Mills and Mullany 2011). This discrimination is often explained by the dominance of masculine norms that make male behaviour the default in organizations and categorize other behaviour as deviant and therefore inappropriate. Consequently, it can be argued that all organizations are engaged in gendered work processes (Kanter [1977] 1995).

In linguistics and discourse analysis, similar questions have been examined in terms of (perceived) gender-specific language behaviour. The general paradigm observed in gender studies and outlined above can also be found in the field of business communication (for an overview that retains its excellence, cf. Talbot 1998). In early research on gender, male and female linguistic behaviour was studied primarily in terms of male dominance in society. It was claimed that women were interrupted more often than men, that women were less successful in their own attempts to interrupt others, that they used less humour in conversation and generally talked less in gender-mixed groups (cf. Fishman 1978; Talbot 1998).

Table 6.1: Widely used stereotypes describing interactional styles

In addition, certain interactional styles have been described as either “feminine” or “masculine”, that is, as being typical of one gender (Tannen 1990). Overviews can be found in Talbot (1998: 91–95) as well as Holmes and Stubbe (2003: 574). Some of the most widely used stereotypical features are displayed in Table 6.1. Of course, such dichotomizing lists ignore other factors such as ethnicity, age, and class that also have an impact on interactional styles, as well as the varying contexts and purposes of interactions. Nevertheless, while they are obviously simplistic and over-generalizing, they do describe the stereotypes and images that many people have in mind when talking about “men and women at work”. Such images and expectations are rather influential (Thimm, Koch, and Schey 2003). In fact, one of the most successful and widely used theories about gender and leadership was proposed by Kanter ([1977] 1995), who claimed that women in male-dominated organizations are subject to the four “role traps” of “mother”, “seductress”, “pet” and “iron maiden”. According to Kanter, all of these reproduce historically developed archetypal patterns that reinforce male dominance and strongly affect how women’s communication is perceived. The notion that such stereotypical images influence people’s perceptions of communication has been supported to some degree by empirical evidence (for a summary, cf. Holmes and Stubbe 2003: 575).

Many of the quantitative results of these early studies were re-examined in a large New Zealand workplace study (Holmes 2000a; Holmes and Stubbe 2003), which confirmed some widespread stereotypes while refuting a significantly larger number. Firstly, the authors could not confirm that women are more off-topic than men; rather, digressions depend much more on the purpose of a meeting than on the gender of the participants. Secondly, in early studies, it was repeatedly claimed that men would speak more in public contexts than women (Gräßel 1991; James and Drakich 1993); again, however, the reality is more complex. The length and number of contributions to a conversation depend much more on the status and position of the speaker than on his or her gender. In fact, those with a chairing role talk most throughout meetings, regardless of gender (Holmes 2000a; Menz and Al-Roubaie 2008; Yieke 2002). Additionally, the stereotype that women, especially in leadership positions, use less humour than men in order not to jeopardize their reputation and authority proved to be inaccurate in the New Zealand workplace studies. On the contrary, women in leadership positions used humour more often than men. A more serious difference, however, was found in the type of humour. While the humour of women served more collaborative purposes, men pursued more competitive goals. Only the amount of small talk was confirmed as being more extensive and of a more personal nature in “feminine” workplaces than in “masculine” ones, although some of the early studies on this question have to be classified as biased towards the stereotype.

The main conclusion drawn by Holmes and Stubbe, however, concerns a point of methodology. They argued convincingly for a qualitative approach as the only way to take account of meetings’ complexity, as well as to move away from essentialist conceptualizations that ascribe gender to a person or role, and towards a more constructivist perspective based on communities of practice (Eckert and McConnell-Ginet 1992). This approach argues that gender is not associated with externally attributed categorizations, but instead is derived from interactional practice, and has therefore sometimes been described as “doing gender” (West and Zimmerman 1987).

These theoretical considerations play an important role in the analysis of leadership styles. Previous studies stereotypically ascribed to women leadership styles that were more normatively “female”, i.e., supportive, relational, facilitative and cooperative, and primarily characterized by linguistic strategies of mitigation, indirect request, etc. It was concluded that women would end in a classic double-bind situation (Grabe and Hyde 2006), as normative female roles did not correspond to normative leadership roles.

Recent studies show, however, that such dichotomies are not productive, and that both men and women draw on a wide repertoire of linguistic practices, which they use in a targeted and context-sensitive manner. In workplaces perceived as “feminine”, digressions are used to build relationships, and small talk at the beginning of meetings plays an important role (Holmes and Stubbe 2003: 588). Nevertheless, direct requests and instructions are also found in these “feminine” contexts as expressions of leadership. Moreover, women participate very successfully in more “masculine” contexts, which are characterized by the discourse practice of so-called “contestive” (i.e. face-threatening) humour, and use this to achieve their leadership goals (Holmes and Stubbe 2003: 589−593). In this way, a “masculine” orientation can be observed in a woman’s interactions as a leader (Schnurr and Mak 2011), although this is highly dependent on the specific context of the interactions. At the same time, Baxter (2012) argues that women in leadership positions proactively use a broad range of interactive resources to communicate with their predominantly male colleagues, including the strategic (i.e., not inescapable or “naturalized”) use of Kanter’s ([1977] 1995) four stereotyped female roles mentioned above. Baxter thus concludes that women are most successful as leaders if they achieve a balance between “doing authority”, “doing politeness”, and “doing humor” (Baxter 2010: 148−152). Similar results are obtained by a case study conducted by Holmes and Marra (2011), who describe the complexity of “doing leadership” in gendered and ethnicized workplaces and show how women cope successfully with this complexity by performing hybridized identities (cf. also Bakar 2005).

On the other hand, men also use both mitigated and authoritative strategies depending on the context, as shown by Chan’s (2007) case study. Furthermore, Baxter (2010) shows that women and men use similar linguistic choices and strategies when “doing leadership” effectively, with both genders putting relational as well as more authoritarian styles of leadership to use in order to achieve their goals. In short, it has been shown that leadership is constructed through the involved parties’ linguistic choices rather than their genders (Mullany 2011). Thus, although stereotypically “masculine” and “feminine” workplaces can be found, the discursive practices of leaders of either gender do not necessarily coincide with the stereotypes expected. Only the degree of reflection differs; in interviews, women present themselves as much more aware of the strategic role of these practices.

In summary, there is no clear relationship between gender and linguistic practices or styles. Consequently, certain styles can be de-gendered because those stereotyped as “masculine” are simply re-constructed as leadership styles per se (Holmes 2006). At the same time, gender is always only one factor among many to be correlated with discursive practices. However, it is often given high priority in interaction and thus many individuals tend to examine interactions with such a strong focus on gender that they miss practices and styles that do not fit into the pre-conceived gender patterns. In fact, on closer examination both men and women use a variety of strategies, depending on the context, to achieve their goals; in so doing they sometimes correspond more, but often less, to the stereotypical image, depending on the norms developed in their communities of practice. For this reason, more recent theories tend to speak of (temporary) identity constructions rather than social roles and role functions (Holmes and Stubbe 2003; Angouri 2011; Mullany 2011; Baxter 2012; Baxter and Al-A’ali 2014).

5Efficiency and structure vs. emergence and perceived chaos

The most frequently cited reasons for the bad reputation of meetings are their inefficiency, their tedious structure and their long duration. Much of the self-help literature is therefore concerned with organizing them efficiently (cf. Section 1). Indeed, efficiency, including communicative efficiency, is one of the central concepts of management studies (Kleinberger Günther 2003). Measuring it is, however, seen as challenging. Efficiency is most often conceived of as the ratio of result to effort. High efficiency therefore means operating with a minimum of effort to achieve a specific goal (cf. also Stahl and Menz 2014: 8−27). Recently, Dannerer (2005, 2008) has also reflected on communicative efficiency from a linguistic perspective. On the basis of authentic meetings, she has created a list of eleven characteristics of efficient communication. She includes the amount of time spent, the establishment of joint action goals, consistent processing, and the completion of action patterns, as well as factors such as the readiness to listen and the appropriate social and institutional conditions (e.g., the definition of roles and functions) (Dannerer 2008). The advantage of this approach is obvious. The criteria are empirically verifiable, as they are based on the analysis of authentic interaction data. Nevertheless, there are important reasons to further argue that ostensible efficiency (i.e., low resource costs) may not always be effective in the sense of optimal output, and that apparent inefficiency may have important advantages.

As early as 1999, Menz showed that, under certain circumstances, seemingly chaotic and unpredictable developments during a meeting can be to the company’s advantage because they allow problems to emerge which would otherwise remain undiscussed, and would certainly require more effort to resolve at a later stage (cf. also Menz 2011). Digressions may also be functional in the sense of building or maintaining relationships (Holmes and Stubbe 2003). Similarly, unplanned activities such as short pauses, which may emerge in the course of the interaction even when the participants have agreed to continue, need not inhibit the workflow because the participants continue to display their orientation to the agenda of the meeting despite the break (Deppermann, Schmitt, and Mondada 2010). This mutual orientation is not only displayed verbally, but also through other modes such as gaze direction, eye contact, and body signals.

Moreover, decision-making in meetings need not proceed in a structured and linear way, but can also be emergent and mundane, and so pass almost unnoticed. Indeed, highly structured decisions tend to be less durable than those reached through discussions that may be spiral and sometimes messy (Kwon, Clarke, and Wodak 2009; cf. also Section 3). Consequently, aiming for communicative efficiency and insisting on a strict structure is not always the best strategy in the long run.

Another reason why it may be important to embrace apparent inefficiency in communication is that companies have undergone greater transformations in the last 20 years than in many decades previously (Vachek 2008, 2009). These changes coincide with the emergence of post-bureaucratic organizations. These are characterized by the re-introduction of spontaneity (instead of routines), complexity (instead of disambiguation), and individuality (instead of strict compliance with rules). They are also marked by an increasing need for communication (Donnelon and Heckscher 1994; Iedema 2003: 15−19). In contrast to the strict compliance with rules, acceptance of hierarchy, and rationality, which are dominant in strictly structured organizations, post-bureaucratic organizations expect their members to have qualities such as spontaneity, initiative, commitment, enthusiasm, and pragmatic decision-making. Yet it is precisely these qualities that make meetings apparently messy and inefficient. A certain amount of vagueness, uncertainty, and underdetermination are thus prerequisites for the effective performance of such an organization. Consequently, as well as being structured, meetings need some apparent inefficiency, albeit at different stages in the communicative process (Menz 2011 and Section 6 below).

6Further research: Self-organization and ambiguity as resilient resources in meetings

Meetings are at the core of business: there is no business without meetings. As a consequence, they are the subject of many academic disciplines, including management and organizational theory. It is, therefore, all the more surprising that linguists and discourse analysts, on the one hand, and organizational theorists on the other have so far hardly taken notice of each other. In fact, it would be highly desirable, firstly, to relate the close analyses of text and talk prevailing in linguistics and discourse analysis to a broader context of organizational theory and social-science approaches (Habscheid 2000; Mautner 2016), and, secondly, to put the large theoretical frameworks predominant in organizational theory to the (empirical) test. On the discourse-analysis side, this lack of integration reflects the fact that a good portion of linguistically-oriented analysis is committed to the ethnomethodologically informed theory of conversation analysis, which systematically and strictly rejects any attempt to link findings with a broader context beyond what can be determined from the data at hand. However, integration is also so rare because the findings of organizational theory are rarely, if ever, adopted in linguistic research in general. The few notable exceptions include recent publications by Wodak, Kwon and their collaborators, who position a detailed linguistic analysis of meetings in the larger contexts of historical approaches and organizational theory, and emphasize that the stability of an organization can only be maintained by interactive work (cf. also Menz 2000).

Another approach that may help to bridge the gap between linguistics and organizational theory is Iedema’s (1997) concept of morphogenesis. This attempts to trace the means by which broader institutional processes are instantiated in local interaction. In the context of meetings, minutes play a crucial role. The preparation of such minutes is interpreted as textualization (Iedema 2003: 144). The process of transforming a spoken discussion into written drafts and, finally, a formal and official text results in an increasing temporal and spatial distance – time-space distanciation according to Giddens (1984: 171) – from the original point of departure (i.e., the meeting). The crucial consequence is that the text becomes increasingly rigid. At the grammatical level, textualization (i.e., the reformulation of talk and earlier drafts) is associated with grammatical metaphorization (Halliday 1994), resulting in the drafts and texts being formulated ever more abstractly (through processes such as passivization, nominalization, etc.). This, in turn, makes the text increasingly authoritative and even coercive. In the present context, the question of unalterability (i.e., resistance to change) is of primary interest, as this process of textualizing and transforming a lively discussion among people into a formal written text also reduces ambiguity (cf. also Karlsson 2009).

The process of morphogenesis can therefore be described as an ongoing, step-by-step process of disambiguation, reducing uncertainties, ambiguities and vagueness. It can be seen as a way to connect discourse practices with concepts from organization theory such as March and Simon’s model of “bounded rationality” (March 1994; Simon 1959). This argues that the essential task of an organization is to reduce complexity in order to enable decisions to be made.

However, an approach focusing on bounded rationality captures only one side of the problem. As argued above, apparent inefficiency and “messy” discussions can lead to unexpected but positive results. The temporary retention of complexity is therefore just as important as reducing it through disambiguation (Weick 1979). Menz (1999, 2000, 2011) proposes a model of a balancing act which companies must master in order to meet these diverging and sometimes contradictory requirements. This balancing act of allowing flexibility while maintaining stability is essentially a discursive practice performed by all participants in business communication, including meetings (cf. also Sections 2 and 3). It cannot be imposed or decreed by superiors but emerges through the interaction of participants committed to negotiating meaning in a community of practice, and is enacted in the self-organizational and fine-grained processes of joint interaction (Boden 1994; Menz 1999, 2002).

The field of business communication, in which meetings are an integral if not the central part, provides an ideal arena for the integration, indeed the synthesis, of organizational theories and discourse-analytical approaches. The field is currently dominated by approaches related to management and organizational theory, which strongly emphasize structure, order and efficiency as the target criteria – sometimes too strongly. It is therefore highly desirable to supplement these approaches with discourse-analytical studies, which, by definition, analyze (naturally-occurring) language in use.

7Conclusion

Meetings constitute one of the key genres encountered in organizations generally and in business organizations specifically. Numerous discourse-analytic studies have shown that participants in meetings strive for consensus, even in taking decisions, and use discursive strategies designed to achieve it. If conflicts arise, they resort to different strategies that will make future cooperation among them possible, in particular face-saving ones such as topic transition, conflict negotiation and, perhaps surprisingly, humour.

With respect to the issue of gender-specific differences in leadership, it has been shown that stereotypes and prejudice continue to play an important role. However, empirical studies have proved that leaders’ discursive practices do not normally correspond directly to the stereotypes associated with their gender. Rather, leaders of both genders use discursive strategies traditionally considered typically “male” or “female” in a context-sensitive way according to their needs.

Discourse-analytic investigations have also yielded surprising results concerning the efficiency of meetings. Management scholars view the frequent (apparent) inefficiency of meetings as one of the principal reasons for their bad reputation and recommend striving for maximum efficiency. By contrast, discourse-analytic studies have shown that unplanned and even unforeseen developments in meetings, which at first sight might seem to reduce efficiency, can actually lead to improved results – and indeed may even be a precondition for them.

In the light of these inter-disciplinary differences, the present contribution ends with a plea to combine or, even better, synthesize the approaches that at present dominate in management studies and in discourse analysis. Future research on meetings, and on business communication in general, should aim to reconcile these different perspectives and integrate their respective strengths. For if perceived chaos and ambiguity were recognized as an integral part of meetings, participants would view them in a more relaxed manner, and meetings might eventually shed their undeservedly bad reputation.

References

Angouri, Jo. 2010. “If we know about culture it will be easier to work with one another”: Developing skills for handling corporate meetings with multinational participation. Language and Intercultural Communication 10(3). 206−224.

Angouri, Jo. 2011. “We are in a masculine profession. . .”: Constructing gender identities in a consortium of two multinational engineering companies. Gender and Language 5(2). 373−403.

Angouri, Jo & Meredith Marra. 2010. Corporate meetings as genre: A study of the role of the chair in corporate meeting talk. Text & Talk 30(6). 615−636.

Angouri, Jo & Francesca Bargiela-Chiappini. 2011. “So what problems bother you and you are not speeding up your work?” Problem solving talk at work. Discourse & Communication 5(3). 209−229.

Bakar, Kesumawati A. 2005. Re-examining femininity: The voices of leadership in managerial meeting discourse. GEMA Online Journal of Language Studies 5(1). 1−36.

Barnes, Rebecca. 2007. Formulations and the facilitation of common agreement in meetings talk. Text & Talk 27(3). 273−296.

Baxter, Judith. 2010. The language of female leadership. 1st edn. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Baxter, Judith. 2012. Women of the corporation: A sociolinguistic perspective of senior women’s leadership language in the U.K. Journal of Sociolinguistics 16(1). 81−107.

Baxter, Judith & Haleema Al-A’ali. 2014. “Your situation is critical. . .”: The discursive enactment of leadership by business women in Middle Eastern and Western European contexts. Gender and Language 8(1). 91−116.

Bilbow, Grahame T. 2002. Commissive speech act use in intercultural business meetings. International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching 40(4). 287−303.

Bilbow, Grahame T. 2007. Speaking and not speaking across cultures. In Giuliana Garzone & Cornelia Ilie (eds.), The use of English in institutional and business settings: An intercultural perspective (Linguistic Insights: Studies in Language and Communication 34), 229−244. Bern: Peter Lang.

Boden, Deirdre. 1994. The business of talk: Organizations in action. Cambridge: Polity Press/Basil Blackwell.

Chan, Angela. 2007. Same context, different strategies: A company director’s discourse in business meetings. Journal of Asian Pacific Communication 17(1). 61−81.

Dannerer, Monika. 1999. Besprechungen im Betrieb: Empirische Analysen und didaktische Perspektiven. München: Iudicium.

Dannerer, Monika. 2002a. Scherzen und Lachen in innerbetrieblichen Besprechungen. In Roland Bauer and Hans Goebl (eds.), Parallela IX: Testo-variazione-informatica/Text-Variation-Informatik (Pro Lingua 35), 115−132. Wilhelmsfeld: Gottfried Egert.

Dannerer, Monika. 2002b. Allen Ernstes scherzen? Formen und Funktionen von Scherzen und Lachen in innerbetrieblichen Besprechungen. In Reinhard Fiehler and Michael Becker-Mrotzek (eds.), Unternehmenskommunikation, 89−114. Tübingen: Gunter Narr.

Dannerer, Monika. 2005. Effizienz in beruflicher Kommunikation: Überlegungen zu einer linguistischen Beschreibung am Beispiel von innerbetrieblichen Besprechungen. In Ulrich Ammon, Klaus J. Mattheier & Peter Nelde (eds.), Sociolinguistica: Internationales Jahrbuch für Europäische Soziolinguistik (Band 19 “Wirtschaft und Sprache”), 36–49. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer.

Dannerer, Monika. 2008. Gute Kommunikation teuer? Zum Konzept der kommunikativen Effizienz in den Wirtschaftswissenschaften und der Linguistik. In Florian Menz and Andreas P. Müller (eds.), Organisationskommunikation: Grundlagen und Analysen der sprachlichen Inszenierung von Organisation, 47−69. München: Rainer Hampp.

Deppermann, Arnulf, Reinhold Schmitt & Lorenza Mondada. 2010. Agenda and emergence: Contingent and planned activities in a meeting. Journal of Pragmatics 42(6). 1700−1718.

Domke, Christine. 2008. Besprechungen und ihr Bedarf. In Florian Menz and Andreas P. Müller (eds.), Organisationskommunikation: Grundlagen und Analysen der sprachlichen Inszenierung von Organisation, 205−224. München: Rainer Hampp.

Donnelon, Anne & Charles Heckscher. 1994. The post-bureaucratic organization: New perspectives on organizational change. Thousand Oaks: Sage.

Eckert, Penelope & Sally McConnell-Ginet. 1992. Communities of practice: Where language, gender and power all live. In Kira Hall, Mary Bucholtz & Moonwomon Birch (eds.), Locating power, 89−99. Berkeley, CA: Berkeley Women and Language Group.

Fishman, Pamela M. 1978. Interaction: The work women do. Social Problems 25(4). 397−406.

Giddens, Anthony. 1984. The constitution of society. Cambridge: Polity.

Grabe, Shelly & Shibley Hyde. 2006. Impact of gender in leadership. In Margaret Foegen Karsten (ed.), Gender, race, and ethnicity in the workplace: Issues and challenges for today’s organizations. Vol. 2, 183−198. London: Praeger.

Gräßel, Ulrike. 1991. Sprachverhalten und Geschlecht: Eine empirische Studie zu geschlechtsspezifischem Sprachverhalten in Fernsehdiskussionen (Aktuelle Frauenforschung 13). Pfaffenweiler: Centaurus Verlagsgesellschaft.

Habscheid, Stephan. 2000. Das “Mikro-Makro-Problem” in der Gesprächsforschung. Gesprächsforschung 1. 125−148.

Halliday, Michael A. K. 1994. An introduction to functional grammar. 2nd edn. London: Arnold.

Henkel, Shri. 2007. Successful meetings: How to plan, prepare, and execute top-notch business meetings. Ocala, FL: Atlantic Publishing Group Inc.

Heritage, John C. & D. Rod Watson. 1980. Aspects of the properties of formulations in natural conversations: Some instances analysed. Semiotica 30(3). 245−262.

Holmes, Janet. 2000a. Women at work: Analysing women’s talk in New Zealand workplaces. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics 22(2). 1−17.

Holmes, Janet. 2000b. Politeness, power and provocation: How humour functions in the workplace. Discourse Studies 2(2). 159−185.

Holmes, Janet. 2006. Gendered talk at work: Constructing gender identity through workplace discourse. Oxford: Blackwell.

Holmes, Janet & Meredith Marra. 2004. Leadership and managing conflict in meetings. Pragmatics 14(4). 439−462.

Holmes, Janet & Meredith Marra. 2011. Leadership discourse in a Maori workplace: Negotiating gender, ethnicity and leadership at work. Gender and Language 5(2). 317−342.

Holmes, Janet, Meredith Marra & Stephanie Schnurr. 2008. Impoliteness and ethnicity: Māori and Pākehā discourse in New Zealand workplaces. Journal of Politeness Research 4(2). 193−219.

Holmes, Janet & Maria Stubbe. 2003. “Feminine” workplaces: Stereotype and reality. In Janet Holmes & Miriam Meyerhoff (eds.), The handbook of language and gender, 574−599. Oxford: Blackwell.

Iedema, Rick. 1997. Interactional dynamics and social change: Planning as morphogenesis. Sydney: University of Sydney dissertation.

Iedema, Rick. 2003. Discourses of post-bureaucratic organization. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

James, Deborah & Janice Drakich. 1993. Understanding gender differences in amount of talk: A critical review of research. In Deborah Tannen (ed.), Gender and conversational interaction, 281−312. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Kanter, Rosabeth Moss. [1977] 1995. Men and women of the corporation. 2nd edn. New York: Basic Books.

Karlsson, Anna-Malin. 2009. Fixing meaning: On the semiotic and interactional role of written texts in a risk analysis meeting. Text & Talk 29(4). 415−438.

Kell, Susan, Meredith Marra, Janet Holmes & Bernadette Vine. 2007. Ethnic differences in the dynamics of women’s work meetings. Multilingua 26(4). 309−331.

Kleinberger Günther, Ulla. 2003. Kommunikation in Betrieben: Wirtschaftslinguistische Aspekte der innerbetrieblichen Kommunikation. Bern: Peter Lang.

Kwon, Winston, Ian Clarke & Ruth Wodak. 2009. Organizational decision-making, discourse, and power: integrating across contexts and scales. Discourse & Communication 3(3). 273−302.

Liraz, Meir. 2013. How to conduct successful meetings: A step by step guide to conducting a successful business meeting. S.l.: Liraz.

Louhiala-Salminen, Leena & Mirjaliisa Charles. 2008. English as the lingua franca of international business communication: Whose English? What English? In Juan Carlos Palmer-Silveira, Miguel F. Ruiz-Garrido & Inmaculada Fortanet-Gómez (eds.), Intercultural and international business communication: Theory, research and teaching (Linguistic Insights: Studies in Language and Communication 38), 27−54. Bern: Peter Lang.

March, James J. 1994. A primer on decision making: How decisions happen. New York: The Free Press.

Mautner, Gerlinde. 2016. Discourse and management: Critical perspectives through the language lens. London & New York: Palgrave.

Meier, Christoph. 1997. Arbeitsbesprechungen: Interaktionsstruktur, Interaktionsdynamik und Konsequenzen einer sozialen Form. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag.

Menz, Florian. 1999. “Who am I gonna do this with?”: Self-organization, ambiguity and decision-making in a business enterprise”. Discourse & Society 10(1). 101−128.

Menz, Florian. 2000. Selbst- und Fremdorganisation im Diskurs: Interne Kommunikation in Wirtschaftsunternehmen. Duisburg: Deutscher Universitätsverlag.

Menz, Florian. 2011. Constructing unity and flexibility in uncertain business environments: Demands on and challenges for the people inside. In Felicijan Bylok & Leszek Cichobłaziński (eds.), The role of human capital in knowledge-based management, 162−171. Częstochowa: WWZPCz.

Menz, Florian. 2002. Selbst- und Fremdorganisation als Erklärungsmodell: Zur Komplexität von Unternehmenskommunikation. In Reinhard Fiehler & Michael Becker-Mrotzek (eds.), Unternehmenskommunikation, 231−256. Tübingen: Gunter Narr.

Menz, Florian & Ali Al-Roubaie. 2008. Interruptions, status and gender in medical interviews: The harder you brake, the longer it takes. Discourse & Society 19(5). 645−666.

Mills, Sara & Louise Mullany. 2011. Language, gender and feminism: Theory, methodology and practice. London: Routledge.

Morrison, Ann M., Randall P. White & Ellen van Velsor. 1987. Breaking the glass ceiling: Can women reach the top of America’s largest corporations? Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

Mullany, Louise. 2004. Gender, politeness and institutional power roles: Humour as a tactic to gain compliance in workplace business meetings. Multilingua − Journal of Cross-Cultural and Interlanguage Communication 23(1-2). 13−37.

Mullany, Louise. 2007. Gendered discourse in the professional workplace. Basingstroke: Palgrave.

Mullany, Louise. 2011. Gender, language and leadership in the workplace. Gender and Language 5(2). 303−316.

Müller, Andreas Paul. 1997. “Reden ist Chefsache”: Linguistische Studien zu sprachlichen Formen sozialer “Kontrolle” in innerbetrieblichen Arbeitsbesprechungen (Studien zur deutschen Sprache 6). Tübingen: Gunter Narr.

New Zealand workplace studies homepage: http://www.victoria.ac.nz/lals/centres-and-institutes/language-in-the-workplace.

Nielsen, Mie Femø. 2009. Interpretative management in business meetings: Understanding managers’ interactional strategies through conversation analysis. Journal of Business Communication 46(1). 23−56.

Nielsen, Mie Femø. 2013. “Stepping stones” in opening and closing department meetings. Journal of Business Communication 50(1). 34−67.

Poncini, Gina. 2002. Investigating discourse at business meetings with multicultural participation. International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching 40(4). 345−373.

Poncini, Gina. 2004. Discursive strategies in multicultural business meetings (Linguistic Insights: Studies in Language and Communication 13). Bern: Peter Lang.

Rogerson-Revell, Pamela. 2007. Humour in business: A double-edged sword: A study of humour and style shifting in intercultural business meetings. Journal of Pragmatics 39(1). 4−28.

Ronkainen, Paula. 2009. Multi-cultural meetings. In Victoria Guillén-Nieto, Carmen Marimón-Llorca & Chelo Vargas-Sierra (eds.), Intercultural business communication and simulation and gaming methodology (Linguistic Insights: Studies in Language and Communication 83), 133−154. Bern: Peter Lang.

Schmitt, Reinhold & Daniela Heidtmann. 2002. Die interaktive Konstitution von Hierarchie in Arbeitsgruppen. In Reinhard Fiehler & Michael Becker-Mrotzek (eds.), Unternehmenskommunikation, 179−209. Tübingen: Gunter Narr.

Schnurr, Stephanie & Bernie Mak. 2011. Leadership in Hong Kong: Is gender really not an issue? Gender and Language 5(2). 343−371.

Schnurr, Stephanie, Meredith Marra & Janet Holmes. 2007. Being (im)polite in New Zealand workplaces: Māori and Pākehā leaders. Journal of Pragmatics 39(4). 712−729.

Simon, Herbert. 1959. Theories of decision making in economics and behavioural science. American Economic Review 49(3). 253−283.

Spencer-Oatey, Helen. 2010. Intercultural competence and pragmatics research: Examining the interface through studies of intercultural business discourse. In Anna Trosborg (ed.), Pragmatics across languages and cultures, 189−216. Berlin: de Gruyter.

Spencer-Oatey, Helen & Jianyu Xing. 2005. Managing talk and non-talk in intercultural interactions: Insights from two Chinese-British business meetings. Multilingua 24(1-2). 55−74.

Stahl, Heinz K. & Florian Menz. 2014. Handbuch Stakeholderkommunikation: Überzeugende Sprache in der Unternehmenspraxis. 2nd edn. Berlin: Erich Schmidt.

Talbot, Mary M. 1998. Language and gender: An introduction. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Tannen, Deborah. 1990. You just don’t understand: Women and men in conversation. 20th edn. New York: Morrow.

Thimm, Caja, Sabine C. Koch & Sabine Schey. 2003. Communicating gendered professional identity: Competence, cooperation, and conflict in the workplace. In Janet Holmes & Miriam Meyerhoff (eds.), The handbook of language and gender, 528−549. Oxford: Blackwell.

Vachek, Edelgard. 2008. “Wie man über Wandel spricht”: Zur perspektivischen Darstellung und interaktiven Bearbeitung von “Wandel” in Organisationsprozessen. In Florian Menz & Andreas P. Müller (eds.), Organisationskommunikation: Grundlagen und Analysen der sprachlichen Inszenierung von Organisation, 167−201. München: Rainer Hampp.

Vachek, Edelgard. 2009. Wie man über Wandel spricht: Perspektivische Darstellung und interaktive Bearbeitung von Wandel in Organisationsprozessen (Kommunikation in Organisationen: Studien zu Sprache, Interaktion und Diskurs in professionellen Kontexten). Wiesbaden: VS Research.

Wasson, Christina. 2000. Caution and consensus in American business meetings. Pragmatics 10(4). 457−481.

Weick, Karl E. 1979. The social psychology of organizing. 2nd edn. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

West, Candace & Don H. Zimmerman. 1987. Doing gender. Gender & Society 1(2). 125−151.

Wodak, Ruth, Winston Kwon & Ian Clarke. 2011. “Getting people on board”: Discursive leadership for consensus building in team meetings. Discourse & Society 22(5). 592−644.

Yeung, Lorrita Ngor-To. 2000. The question of Chinese indirectness: A comparison of Chinese and English participative decision-making discourse. Multilingua 19(3). 221−264.

Yieke, Felicia Arudo. 2002. Language and discrimination: A study of gender and discourse in workplaces in Kenya. Vienna: University of Vienna dissertation.

Zhu, Yunxia. 2011. Building intercultural alliances: A study of moves and strategies in initial business negotiation meetings. Text & Talk 31(1). 101−125.