Conclusion: the doings, the 'hows' and the 'whos' of meetings

In this concluding chapter, we summarise the book by describing what meetings do; how they do what they do, and who are doing the meetings. We have discerned five major sources through which the organisation is done. In meetings, the participants do the organisation and do collaboration by a) representing it, b) creating a shared organisational identity, c) account for the organisation’s visions and decisions, d) create an image of organisational action, and e) negotiate order. Regarding the ‘hows’, we reflect upon the uses of the concepts of meeting chains and diplomacy, how digitalisation transforms meetings, various escapes used during boring meetings while participants still honour the meeting by staying in them and continue our discussion about the development of a new meeting persona. Finally, we reflect upon the relation between the spread of higher education and its relation to meetings. Not only meeting-prone professions are dragged into the meeting society, but also classical professions. And when there, they seem quite good at engaging in meetings, despite mutterings about their meaninglessness. To become an insider in today’s organisational life, it seems you must accept the meeting as a primary form of activity at work.