Introduction: the meeting society

In this introductory chapter, it is shown that the meeting is an overlooked area within organisational studies. Meetings are either seen as instrumental for making decisions which are then promptly implemented, or otherwise looked upon as a waste of time, even morally dubious, when not performing these instrumental functions. We argue that meetings perform many more functions than simply making decisions. Specifically, meetings are instances of collective action. In the chapter, a typology is constructed according to which meetings may be divided into doing the doing, doing the organisation, and doing the collaboration. Whereas doing the doing lies fairly close to the instrumental ideal, the other two types - which are devoted considerable attention throughout the book - perform functions such as making, performing and maintaining the organisation as well as fulfilling participatory and collaborative ideals.