Doctoral dissertation (monograph) (G4)
Managerial Interaction – Discussion Practices in Management Meetings.
List of Authors: Lainema Kirsi
Publisher: Turku School of Economics/University of Turku
Place: Turun kauppakorkeakoulu. Sarja/Series A ; ISSN 1459-4870 ; 3:2013
Publication year: 2013
ISBN: 978-952-249-306-4
eISBN: 978-952-249-307-1
URL: https://www.doria.fi/handle/10024/90331
Managerial meetings are one of the most common managerial practices. In fact, a remarkable share of all managerial work is conducted in various meetings. Similar to many other managerial practices, management meetings are, to a great extent, based on interaction. To date, however, management and organization studies have rarely explored managerial interaction analytically. The present study presents a close-up analysis of the interaction in management meetings. Discussions in the management team meetings are viewed as locally constructed and sustained discursive practices that are produced by the participants (directors) to fit the particular social situation and circumstances.
The data in the current study comprises observations, and audio taped and transcribed meeting discussions from the Top Management Team meetings of one company during one and a half years (in total 35 meetings). A detailed and fine-grained ethnomethodological conversation analysis demonstrates how meeting discussions are structured and organized as characteristic and distinctive discussion practices. These discussion practices differ from each other in terms of who gets to talk, when they get to talk, and how they get to talk. The identified discussion practices comprise monologue, targeted dialogue, free-flowing focused discussions, reporting, drifting, and micro-mining. Each of these discussion practices reflects and constructs different roles and positions for the actors. Different discursive practices allow for addressing different issues, providing various opportunities to contribute to the meeting discussions. For example, monologue is one-party talk that provides the dominant discussant with efficient means for disseminating information. Targeted dialogue, in turn, is a focused two-party discussion that excludes others from the conversation. Exclusive discussion practices are problematic in that they alienate hearers from the discussion topic and, thus, from mutual knowledge-creation. Reporting talk and financial reporting in particular, resembles monologue in that one person controls the agenda and the floor while others assume the role of an audience. One-way reporting talk, mainly on past issues, can be balanced with participatory and freely organizing focused discussions, which allows the directors to raise issues that they consider important. During freely organizing discussions the participants would also identify and label issues as important, make decisions and pursue commitment to mutually agreed decisions. In the management team in focus free-flowing focused discussion and reporting were the most pervasive discussion practices. Drifting and micro-mining are discursive practices that are generally considered problematic, and labeled as “getting off subject”. In the studied management team drifting discussions were employed to gain a temporary time-out, and as a resource for resisting sanctions imposed from outside the management team. Micro-mining discussions were mutually sustained and participatory discussions that probed into detailed technical and operative issues.
The study brings forward how participants employ various interactive strategies, on the one hand, to create opportunities for themselves and each other to contribute to the discussions, and on the other, to exclude each other from the conversation. Furthermore, the study shows how various interactive strategies are employed to label, or construct, some issues as relevant for the managerial work, while framing some other issues out of the managerial agenda. Ultimately, the study demonstrates that the managerial meeting agenda is interactively constructed and negotiated occasions where management actualizes and becomes alive. Therefore, analysis of managerial meetings has an utmost important role in management and organizational research.