The entitativity underlying meetings: Meetings as key in the lifecycle of effective workgroups

Abstract

As more employees work in different locations, meetings become the primary opportunity for workgroup interactions. We explore how workgroup entitativity develops within successful meetings and grounds positive employee and group outcomes between meetings. Social identity theory and self-categorization processes explain how entitativity develops during meetings and activates workgroup identification between meetings. Further, construal level theory, which establishes that physical and psychological distance are positively related, affects entitativity and social identity for dispersed and hybrid workgroups. We propose that entitativity develops in meetings through interactions, co-presence, leader behavior, and meeting size. Between meetings, the frequency of self-categorization into a workgroup identity maintains and even increases workgroup entitativity. Further, task interdependence, informal interactions, and time between meetings affects frequency of self-categorization and, thus, employees’ workgroup entitativity between meetings. We conclude that meetings serve as the primary formal occasion in which workgroup entitativity can be maintained or repaired for optimal workgroup performance.