How shall we meet? Understanding the importance of meeting mode capabilities for different meeting objectives

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.im.2020.103393Get rights and content

Abstract

Distributed business meetings can be conducted in a variety of modes, such as audio-conferencing, video-conferencing, and telepresence, and can have different objectives, ranging from routine information sharing to relationship building. This paper examines whether and how differences in meeting mode effectiveness can be explained by the differing functional capabilities offered by each meeting mode (e.g., discerning facial expressions, experiencing co-location). Using data from the organizers of 612 business meetings, we identify the meeting capabilities perceived as important for different meeting objectives, and find multiple sets of meeting objectives that require the same combinations of capabilities. In addition, we examine whether the importance of different capabilities is affected by meeting size and duration. Using the results of the study, guidelines are developed to help meeting organizers select effective meeting modes based on meeting objectives.

Introduction

Business meetings are a means to coordinate activities and achieve objectives related to business operations [1,2]. With businesses increasingly having greater geographical scope, the need for distributed business meetings with participants at remote locations, has grown significantly [3]. Moreover, due to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and the related health safety measures, there was a compulsory and rapid adoption of distributed meetings across most industries worldwide [4,5]. According to Gartner, as much as 75 % of meetings will be distributed by 2024, significantly up from the 40 % of meetings that were distributed before the pandemic.1 In recent years, software technologies for distributed meetings have evolved very fast, with most solutions and platforms supporting one or more of three key meeting modes—audio-conferencing, video-conferencing, and telepresence.2 Here, the term meeting “mode” refers to the primary means of interpersonal communication for the meeting [[6], [7], [8]].

The choice of a suitable meeting mode is an important consideration when planning a distributed meeting [6], since modes differ significantly in terms of their functional capabilities. For example, audio-conferencing3 participants can hear each other and share a computer screen [9,10]. Video-conferencing technology subsumes the capabilities of audio-conferencing meetings and adds visual interaction, enabling the observation of other participants’ appearance, body language, and facial expressions [11]. In telepresence meetings, each person’s voice comes from the direction of their screen image (spatial audio) and participants at different locations see each other in true life size. Moreover, telepresence meeting rooms facilitate the sense of being co-located by matching the furniture and even wall colors across locations, resulting in an immersive experience in which the functional capabilities of a face-to-face meeting are approximated [12,13].

Business meetings are held for different purposes, and typically, are organized to achieve specific objectives. These objectives can vary over a broad range, from routine information exchange and decision-making to relationship-building [1,14,15]. Given multiple options for distributed meetings, a key question is whether certain modes are more effective than others for specific meeting objectives? Here, the effectiveness of a meeting mode can be defined as the extent to which it facilitates the objectives of the meeting to be achieved [16,17]. Towards this end, the perceived effectiveness of a meeting mode for a business meeting was shown to vary with meeting objectives in [15], but the reasons for these perceived differences were note provided.

The choice of meeting mode can depend on a number of factors, including cost, availability, participants’ prior experience with modes and each other, and symbolic meaning attached to modes [[18], [19], [20], [21], [22]]. The choice may also be influenced by the differing functional capabilities offered by each meeting mode [23]. However, with a variety of possible meeting objectives and various functional capabilities available, recognizing what mode capabilities are important for different objectives is not always clear. For example, when a set of geographically remote colleagues meet to exchange information, they may choose video-conferencing. In this situation, the ability to hear each other and share a screen is sufficient. In fact, seeing each other may add little value and perhaps even be a distraction [24]. Thus, an audio-conferencing mode might be adequate. On the other hand, a newly formed team wanting to meet each other and build trust may require capabilities such as seeing body language and facial expressions and therefore should meet face-to-face, rather than through an audio conference call, for instance.

In this paper, we examine whether and how the differences perceived in the effectiveness of different meeting modes for meetings with different objectives can be explained by the importance of the functional capabilities of each meeting mode. More specifically, we address the following research question: What meeting mode capabilities are important for different business meeting objectives and how can understanding the importance of capabilities for different meeting objectives help in selecting effective meeting modes?

To address this research question, we first develop a list of meeting mode capabilities, drawn from the literature on communication media. Then, we conduct an empirical study at an international company, which involves the collection of questionnaire responses from meeting organizers. Based on data from 612 real-life business meetings, we analyze the importance of meeting mode capabilities for achieving different meeting objectives.

This is the first empirical study on the role of meeting mode capabilities in meeting mode selection. Our analysis points to multiple sets of meeting objectives for which the same combination of capabilities are perceived to be important. Interestingly, we also find that the sets of objectives can be ordered in terms of progressively increasing combinations of important capabilities. These results indicate that the important capabilities can serve as a basis for guidelines to help meeting organizers select effective meeting modes once meeting objectives are known. Another interesting finding is that face-to-face meetings are not likely to be more effective than telepresence for any meeting objective, thereby suggesting that telepresence is an effective substitute for face-to-face meetings in most situations.

We also analyze whether the size of a meeting (in terms of the number of participants) and the duration of a meeting impact the perceived importance of different capabilities. In this regard, we do not find a significant relationship between meeting size and the importance of capabilities, but we do find meeting duration to be positively associated with the importance of multiple capabilities, for four types of meeting objectives.

The paper is organized in six sections: In Section 2, we review the literature that provides the theoretical foundation of our study. In Section 3, we explain our research design and develop the conceptual basis for examining business meeting objectives and meeting mode capabilities. We present our data collection approach and analysis in Section 4. In Section 5, we discuss our field study findings on the importance of meeting mode capabilities for different meeting objectives and effective meeting mode selection. We conclude the paper in Section 6, highlighting the key theoretical and managerial contributions of our study and addressing limitations and further research directions.

Section snippets

Literature review

There is a significant body of research on mediated organizational communication—not specific to the business meeting context—that pertains to the three elements that are key to the current study [21,25]: communication objectives, communication media, and media capabilities. The literature on the relationship between the first two elements is reviewed in the first subsection and then media capabilities are discussed in the second subsection.

Research design

Business meetings involve dynamic communication and coordination [46] among multiple participants who generally observe, exchange, discuss, and/or develop some type of content [14]. The content can be in the form of interactive dialog, and can also include text, spreadsheets, images, slide decks, videos, or physical or digital artifacts. Through the exchange of subjective views and opinions, the meeting participants can establish a common frame of reference and build consensus [3,32]. Such

Analysis and results

In this section, we first describe our field study’s data collection approach. Then, we present the results of an assessment of capability importance across individual objectives and an examination of the relationship between meeting size/duration and capability importance, across the different objectives.6

Discussion and implications

The approach taken in this study—examining what each meeting mode capability affords separately instead of considering integrated concepts—has important implications in at least three ways. First, it explains the relationships between objectives and capabilities in a consistent and comprehensive way. Second, differences in media effectiveness found in prior research can be explained at a higher level of granularity. Third, guidelines for effective meeting mode selection can be developed.

Conclusion

The goal of this paper was to examine what meeting mode capabilities are important for different business meeting objectives and how understanding the importance of capabilities for different meeting objectives can help in selecting effective meeting modes. We found that the importance varies across objectives and that sets of objectives can be identified for which the same combination of capabilities are perceived to be important, that the important capabilities progressively increase across

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Willem Standaert: Conceptualization, Methodology. Steve Muylle: Conceptualization, Methodology. Amit Basu: Conceptualization, Methodology.

Willem Standaert is an Assistant Professor at HEC Liège and a guest professor at Vlerick Business School and Ghent University. His research interests are in the areas of technology-mediated business meetings, digitally enabled buyer–supplier interactions, and digital innovation. Willem’s academic work has been presented at scientific and business conferences and published in academic journals, such as Electronic Commerce Research and Applications, Information Technology and Management, Journal

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    Willem Standaert is an Assistant Professor at HEC Liège and a guest professor at Vlerick Business School and Ghent University. His research interests are in the areas of technology-mediated business meetings, digitally enabled buyer–supplier interactions, and digital innovation. Willem’s academic work has been presented at scientific and business conferences and published in academic journals, such as Electronic Commerce Research and Applications, Information Technology and Management, Journal of the Association for Information Systems, and Psychology & Marketing.

    Steve Muylle is a Professor and Partner at Vlerick Business School and also a Professor at Ghent University. His research work is on the use of digital technologies in business and has been published in various outlets, including IEEE Computer Society Proceedings, Communications of the ACM, Decision Support Systems, Electronic Commerce Research and Applications, Information and Management, Information Technology and Management, and MIT Sloan Management Review.

    Amit Basu is the Carr P. Collins Chair in MIS, Chairman of Information Technology and Operations Management, and Professor at Cox School of Business. His research interests are in the areas of knowledge and data base systems, decision support systems, digital strategy, IS leadership, electronic commerce and workflow management. He has published technical papers on these topics in a variety of leading publications, including major academic journals, such as Management Science, Information Systems Research, IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics, Decision Support Systems, European Journal of Operational Research, Journal of Management Information Systems and Electronic Commerce Research and Applications, IEEE Computer and Omega, management publications, such as the Sloan Management Review and the Wall Street Journal, as well as the proceedings of many major academic conferences. He has served on the editorial boards of several leading academic journals. From 2012–2014, he served as the President of the INFORMS Information Systems Society.

    This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

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