Like most such international organizations, GCAE has a variety of meeting types from small internal and informal gatherings of a few local staff to large formal meetings held externally at different venues across Europe. The questionnaire data for this study were collected during such an external event where the annual, whole GCAE met to discuss key topics and to review the previous year’s business. This event consisted of a series of formal, subgroup meetings (ranging from 8 to 20 participants) culminating in a whole group meeting (approximately 50 participants) on the final afternoon.
Obviously, differences in size, location, purpose and, indeed, interactive mix of participants can have a substantial effect on meeting behaviours and outcomes, as noted in my own and others’ research. Indeed, the genre of business meetings itself can be subdivided into several subgenres using various criteria: for instance, whether a meeting is inter- or extra-organizational, has a primarily commercial business focus or a professional, consultative brief; whether a meeting is essentially collaborative and information-sharing in nature, or is fundamentally competitive and results-driven.
In theory the meetings at GCAE are interorganisational, routine events performing an essentially consultative and advisory function within a professional body. Nevertheless, as with most meetings, beneath this public brief there are no doubt several layers of organizational and individual agendas which contribute to the complexity of these interactions. Some of these issues arose superficially in this study but they will be explored more fully in the second, discourse-analytic stage of the research.