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The Agency Of Meetings As Systemic Process In The Constitution Of Organizations: Insights From A Longitudinal Study And Bifocal Analysis Of An Organizations Meetings, Martin Duffy

Doctoral

Guided by a systemic and processual perspective, this research considers meetings as a collective organizational phenomenon and analyses how they contribute to the constitution of organizations. Longitudinal immersion as a participant observer in one organization's 'river of discourse' prompted initial abductive theory development to conceptualize meetings as a collective phenomenon, rather than studying them as individual-centered events. Preliminary analysis conducted during data recording indicated collective agency that could not be attributed to individual meetings, nor to the intentionality of meeting participants. Subsequent bifocal analysis of the meetings' discourse data reveals modes of meeting connectivity that reflect and contribute to their …