Authors
Nale Lehmann-Willenbrock, Joseph A Allen, Mark van Vugt
Publication date
2020/3/17
Source
Managing Meetings in Organizations
Volume
20
Pages
3-25
Publisher
Emerald Publishing Limited
Description
Teams in organizations have weekly–or even daily–meetings to exchange information, generate ideas, solve problems, and make decisions. Yet, many team meetings are described as ineffective by the participants, due to either their design or dysfunctional communication practices within the meeting. To gain new insights into addressing these issues, this chapter goes back deep in history and discusses the origins and functions of group meetings. Building upon evolutionary theories of human behavior, the authors examine the evolutionary significance of meetings and the ways in which they were adaptive for our human ancestors. Drawing from this evolutionary perspective, we then compare meetings in ancestral times with their modern-day counterparts. Using evidence from (a) ethnographic studies of small-scale societies that model ancestral group life and (b) organizational and team science, we contrast the …
Total citations
2020202120222023111
Scholar articles
N Lehmann-Willenbrock, JA Allen, M van Vugt - Managing Meetings in Organizations, 2020