Business Communication: Meetings and their Purposes

This document discusses the importance and implications of meetings in workplaces. It explains the different types of meetings and their agendas. It also talks about the taxonomy method for classifying the typologies of purposes of meetings. The document includes a critique of a peer post and a summary of learning. The subject is Business Communication and the course code is 4.

Running head: BUSINESS COMMUNICATION
Business Communication
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

1BUSINESS COMMUNICATION
Post 2: Critique one peer post
According to Allen et al. (2014), meetings are important in workplaces. The author
believes that the taxonomy method is appropriate for classifying the typologies of purposes of
meetings. The author categorizes meetings into 16 sections. The main purpose of business
meetings are meant for discussing the on-going projects of the organization as well as to
discuss the current status of business at regular intervals. The importance and implications of
meetings are felt mostly in larger organizations that have more than 500 employees. In these
organizations, the managers are majorly engaged in planning, conducting and leading
meetings.
The main purposes for which organizations arrange for meetings are, information sharing,
training, brainstorming, decision-making, problem solving as well as socializing. The
meetings that an organization conducts have impact on the employees and inadvertently build
organizational culture and community. The earlier researches conducted by several authors
classify meetings depending on typology that are mostly conceptual frameworks. The
taxonomical classification of the meetings that the authors conduct here are data driven and
thus provide more concrete conclusions to the topic discussed here.
The authors collect extensive data about the types of meetings that different organizations
conduct and experiences of the employees. In the next part they use classification scheme,
exploratory factor analysis to determine the types of meetings that organizations use
according to purpose. The study shows that most organizations conduct multipurpose
meetings in order to save time and hassle. It is a method to maintain regularity and routine in
an organization.
The study covers all the plausible characteristics of meetings, their purposes and types. The
paper includes several examples and analysis of collected primary data. The findings are

2BUSINESS COMMUNICATION
based on facts and calculations and thus make a powerful contribution to the business
communication concepts (Hart, 2018). The paper is lucid and easy to understand.
Post 3: Summarize learning
From the discussion on business communication I have learnt several things. The
three key elements of any business communication are: opening, discussion and closing. The
three purposes of business communications are to inform, persuade and promote goodwill. A
good opening speech makes half the impression and prepares the audience for persuasion.
The first purpose of a goes business communication is to inform the audience (Lehmann-
Willenbrock, Allen & Kauffeld, 2013). The audience must be clearly informed about the
agenda of the meeting, the topics that will be discussed and the expected outcome of the
meeting. After the opening, the next part is to discuss the issues at hand. The persuasion
happens in this phase. The arguments and the reasoning that the speaker presents persuade
the audience to support their point of view.
The final success of comes from the closing phase. It is necessary that the closing
statement is a strong one so that it has impact on the mind of the audience. The audience
generally decides during the discussion about the views that they support and which they do
not. A good discussion included arguments and counter arguments, questions, explanations
and clarifications, facts and figures and so on. After the discussion the decisions are taken
and agendas for next meeting are set.
There are certain elements that make a business communication successful. The
speaker needs to be clear, structured and consistent. The audience is able to understand the
subject better (Murata, 2014). They are able to respond more, ask questions and provide their
insight into certain matters. This also makes the meeting more successful as new ideas are
born and explored. The study also helps in understanding the different types of meetings and

3BUSINESS COMMUNICATION
their agendas. The meetings are generally conducted in an organization at regular intervals so
that they are able to maintain regularity and routine.

4BUSINESS COMMUNICATION
References
A. Allen, J., Beck, T., W. Scott, C., & G. Rogelberg, S. (2014). Understanding workplace
meetings: A qualitative taxonomy of meeting purposes. Management Research
Review, 37(9), 791-814.
Hart, C. (2018). Doing a literature review: Releasing the research imagination. Sage.
Lehmann-Willenbrock, N., Allen, J. A., & Kauffeld, S. (2013). A sequential analysis of
procedural meeting communication: How teams facilitate their meetings. Journal of
Applied Communication Research, 41(4), 365-388.
Murata, K. (2014). An empirical cross-cultural study of humour in business meetings in New
Zealand and Japan. Journal of Pragmatics, 60, 251-265.