Collaborative meetings: diplomatic relations

In this chapter, focused upon doing the collaboration, we describe how meetings as well as preparations for meetings contain extensive elements of diplomacy and negotiation. In collaborative meetings, there are strong similarities with traditional diplomacy in international politics. Diplomacy can concern conditions for meetings - and thus collaboration - such as where they should be held, in what setting, who should be allowed to participate and how to prevent participants or meeting organisers from losing face. Diplomacy is also used in meetings to avoid conflicts and create consensus, for example through how a document is designed. The chapter illustrates that internal meetings within multi-professional large organisations may also be considered as collaborative by making the different participants come together, talk, and continuously raise problematisations on how to try to go ahead together. In large organisations, it is important to anticipate how other actors and units will respond to what is done. A plausible, and quite simple, explanation to the many meetings held regarding collaborative issues is that the construction and maintenance of diplomatic relations is exhaustive.