Towards a Survey of Differences in Preferred Meeting Styles Across Cultures

Abstract

Meetings are an essential part of organizational life everywhere. Although research has shown that meeting styles differ among cultures, studies focusing on a broad set of data to compare the prevalent meeting styles systematically are rare, partly because of the high academic standards required by researchers. There is, however, much informal data on meeting styles aimed at practitioners, which despite its shortcomings, can be useful. The information provided is largely based on the experiences made by internationally active businesspeople. Under the author’s supervision, students of the author’s business school analyzed a great number of descriptions of meeting practices to investigate in what respects meetings differ. The results were combined with earlier research and general situational context models to come to a meeting-specific model that enables a systematic comparison of meeting practices. This model can be applied for educational as well as for practical purposes.