Decision-Making in Meetings as Talk-in-Interaction

Abstract

Decisions in organizations are often made during some form of talk-in-interaction. In this article, conversation analysis is used to identify those interactions and linguistic features which characterize decision-making at four Dutch organizations. In taking this approach, the research highlights the ways in which organizational members collaboratively create the future of their organization. It also shows that the formulation and content of decisions is inextricably connected to the situations in which they are produced and that what counts as a decision depends on the communicative norms of the group that is talking.