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Alexander Paulsson
Senior lecturer
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Planned meetings : Multiplicity, boxed-in dialogues, and deliberative bureaucracy as social form
Author
Summary, in English
In what ways are meetings a social form? How are meetings organized and how do organizations structure meetings to produce consensus around visions of the future? In this article, planning meetings, which gather representatives from the regional Public Transport Authority and the municipalities involved in public transport planning in Stockholm, Sweden, is probed as a social form. By structuring the meetings as collaborative planning processes, the Public Transport Authority’s ambition is to draw on the municipalities’ multiplicity of experiences and views but then arrive at a consensus, on which a strategic document is produced. However, these meetings are perplexing as a social form. While expectations of their outcomes vary, dialogues in the meetings are boxed-in as they follow standardized protocols for agendas, discussions, and decision points. Planned meetings, as this article shows, are an undertheorized aspect of attempts at future-making among formally independent bureaucracies. The article concludes by proposing that deliberative ideals in bureaucratic settings allude to deliberative bureaucracy through the social form of planned meetings.
Department/s
- Organizational Studies
Publishing year
2023
Language
English
Pages
1217-1234
Publication/Series
Current Sociology
Volume
71
Issue
7
Document type
Journal article
Publisher
SAGE Publications
Topic
- Business Administration
Keywords
- Deliberative bureaucracy
- dialogue
- meetings
- public transport
- social form
Status
Published
ISBN/ISSN/Other
- ISSN: 0011-3921