Planned meetings: Multiplicity, boxed-in dialogues, and deliberative bureaucracy as social form

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 invo...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inCurrent sociology Vol. 71; no. 7; pp. 1217 - 1234
Main Author Paulsson, Alexander
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published London, England SAGE Publications 01.11.2023
Sage Publications Ltd
Subjects
Ambition
Authority
Bureaucracy
Business Administration
Cities
Deliberative bureaucracy
dialogue
Economics and Business
Ekonomi och näringsliv
Företagsekonomi
Meetings
Planning
public transport
Public transportation
Samhällsvetenskap
social form
Social Sciences
forme sociale
réunions
formas sociales
transporte público
burocracia deliberativa
reuniones
bureaucratie délibérative
Deliberative bureaucracy
social form
transports publics
diálogo
dialogue
public transport
meetings
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Summary: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.
ISSN:0011-3921
1461-7064
DOI:10.1177/00113921221141472