In the trenches - Making your work meetings a success - journal article

Sep 13, 2026

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Managing meetings effectively is vital in the fast-paced, complex environment of the modern workplace, yet direct scholarly focus on work meetings remains limited. This article investigates what distinguishes successful from unsuccessful meetings from a participant’s perspective. Using a conceptual mapping approach on open-ended statements from participants, it identifies three themes: participant learning and development, coordination of performance across meeting episodes, and development of common understanding and attendee alignment, providing actionable guidance for managers to design and manage meetings.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryPresentations

FormatPDF

Pages14

Reading Time5 min

AccessFree to download

1. What drives a meeting’s success?

2. Meetings as an organizational phenomenon

UC Irvine UC Irvine Previously Published Works Title In the trenches: Making your work meetings a success Permalink [https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3v84w6gp](https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3v84w6gp) Journal Business Horizons, 62(4) ISSN 0007-6813 Authors Romney, Alexander C Smith, Isaac H Okhuysen, Gerardo A Publication Date 2019-07-01 DOI 10.1016/j.bushor.2019.02.003 Peer reviewed [eScholarship.org](eScholarship.org) Powered by the California Digital Library University of California Business Horizons (2019) 62, 459—471 Available online [at](at www.sciencedirect.com)[ www.sciencedirect.com](at www.sciencedirect.com)[ ](at www.sciencedirect.com)ScienceDirect [www.elsevier.com/locate/bushor](www.elsevier.com/locate/bushor) In the trenches: Making your work meetings a success Alexander C. Romney a,* , Isaac H. Smith b, Gerardo A. Okhuysen c a Huntsman School of Business, Utah State University, 3555 Old Main Hill, Logan, UT 84322-3555, U.S.A. b Cornell SC Johnson College of Business, Cornell University, 401L Sage Hall, Ithaca, NY 14853, U.S.A. c Paul Merage School of Business, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA 92697-3130, U.S.A. KEYWORDS Effective meetings; Meeting interdependence; Participant learning and development; Common understanding Abstract Managing meetings effectively is vital in the fast-paced, complex environment of the modern workplace. However, direct scholarly attention to work meetings is still limited, making an understanding of what makes meetings successful elusive. In this article, we examine the particulars of successful and unsuccessful meetings from a participant’s perspective. Employing a conceptual mapping approach, we analyze open-ended statements collected from meeting participants to identify three broad themes associated with meeting success: (1) participant learning and development; (2) the coordination of performance, including the creation of links between meeting episodes; (3) and the development of common understanding and alignment among attendees. By more fully taking these themes into account, managers can be better equipped to design, organize, and manage their work meetings successfully. \# 2019 Kelley School of Business, Indiana University. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. 1. What drives a meeting’s success? In the daily routines of employees and managers, meetings abound: annual review meetings, budget * Corresponding author E-mail addresses: [alex.romney@usu.edu](alex.romney@usu.edu) (A.C. Romney), [isaac.smith@cornell.edu](isaac.smith@cornell.edu) (I.H. Smith), [gerardo.okhuysen@uci.edu](gerardo.okhuysen@uci.edu) (G.A. Okhuysen) meetings, customer service meetings, planning meetings, training meetings, and the list goes on. Meetings have been deﬁned as “communicative event[s] involving three or more people who agree to assemble for a purpose ostensibly related to the functioning of an organization or group”(Schwartzman, 1989 , p. 7) . Not only are meetings ubiquitous in the modern workplace but the amount of time employees and managers spend in work meetings has risen continually over the past 50 years [https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bushor.2019.02.003](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bushor.2019.02.003) 0007-6813/\# 2019 Kelley School of Business, Indiana University. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. (Rogelberg, Scott, & Kello, 2007) . One estimate indicates that managers spend around 23 hours per week attending meetings and that number rises for supervisors and employees of large organizations (Rogelberg et al. , 2007) . As meetings increasingly become a signiﬁcant aspect of organizational life, the nature of work meetings has also become more diverse. In this context, understanding how participants experience meetings and how to effectively manage them is of immense importance in people’s work lives. While there is no clear consensus about what meeting elements are necessary for mee

FAQs

What question does the article aim to answer about meeting success?

It asks how participants perceive meeting success, using participants’ accounts of both successful and unsuccessful meetings to derive the key facets managers can use.

How does the study analyze meeting success?

It employs a conceptual mapping approach and analyzes open-ended statements collected from meeting participants to identify recurring themes linked to successful meetings.

What three broad themes are associated with meeting success?

Participant learning and development; coordination of performance including links between meeting episodes; and development of common understanding and alignment among attendees.

Sep 13, 2026

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