ABSTRACT
For many white-collar organisations, meetings are the very stuff of ‘work’. Meetings also make a crucial contribution to the achievement of workplace goals in blue-collar workplaces, such as factories and industrial sites. In both contexts, meetings provide many opportunities for the expression of institu tional power and authority relationships. Indeed according to Mumby (1988: 68), meetings ‘function as one of the most important and visible sites of organisational power, and of the reification of organisational hierarchy’. As this chapter illustrates, meetings also provide sites for the manifestation of politeness, respect and disrespect, collegiality and solidarity, i.e. various as pects of ‘rapport management’ (Spencer-Oatey 2000).
