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abstract

Meetings constitute an important context for understanding organizational behavior and employee attitudes. Employees spend ever-increasing time in meetings and often complain about their meetings. In contrast, we explore the positive side of meetings and argue that satisfying meetings can empower rather than deplete individual employees. We gathered time-lagged data from an online sample of working adults in the U.S. As hypothesized, meeting satisfaction predicted employee empowerment, and information availability partially mediated this effect. Moreover, we found that these effects were stronger when employees participated in more meetings: Meeting demands moderated the link between meeting satisfaction and information availability as well as the positive, indirect effect of meeting satisfaction (through information availability) on psychological empowerment. Our findings underscore the relevance of workplace meetings for managing and promoting positive employee attitudes. We discuss implications for meeting science and the value of satisfying meetings as a managerial tool for promoting empowerment.

5. Discussion and conclusions

Meetings take up substantial work time for employees of contemporary organizations and can substantially impact employee attitudes and performance outcomes (Allen & Rogelberg, 2013; Kauffeld & Lehmann-Willenbrock, 2012; Rogelberg et al., 2010). This study promotes a positive perspective of workplace meetings: Rather than viewing meetings as a nuisance or a waste of time (e.g., Rogelberg et al., 2006), our findings showcase that meetings have the potential to create positive boosts for employee empowerment. Building on the idea that meetings can function as sensemaking episodes in organizations, we argued that satisfying meetings can create conditions such as improved access to information that foster employee empowerment. First, we found that employees' meeting satisfaction was indeed linked to information availability and their psychological empowerment, even after controlling for previously studied predictors of empowerment (rewards, self-esteem, and locus of control; see Spreitzer, 1995). This finding lends support to our argument that meetings can serve as sensemaking episodes for employees, in line with recent theorizing (Scott et al., 2015). Second, we hypothesized and found that information availability partially mediated the empowering effects of satisfying meetings. Employees who experienced satisfying meetings were more likely to report that they felt they had all the information necessary to accomplish their work tasks, which promoted a sense of empowerment. Although this mediating effect was only partial and several additional mediators are plausible, this finding highlights the importance of information availability as a result of satisfying meetings. Third, we found that meeting demands moderated the relationship between meeting satisfaction and information availability, such that the positive relationship between meeting satisfaction and information availability was stronger at higher levels of meeting demands.