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Meetings and More Meetings: The Relationship Between Meeting
Load and the Daily Well-Being of Employees
Alexandra Luong
University of Minnesota Duluth Steven G. Rogelberg
University of North Carolina at Charlotte
Meetings are an integral part of organizational life; however, few empirical studies
have systematically examined the phenomenon and its effects on employees. By
likening work meetings to interruptions and daily hassles, the authors proposed that
meeting load (i.e., frequency and time spent) can affect employee well-being. For a
period of 1 week, participants maintained daily work diaries of their meetings as well
as daily self-reports of their well-being. Using hierarchical linear modeling analyses,
the authors found a significant positive relationship between number of meetings
attended and daily fatigue as well as subjective workload (i.e., more meetings were
associated with increased feelings of fatigue and workload).
Meetings are an integral and pervasive expe-
rience of organizational life. As a forum in
which employees communicate and coordinate
the organization’s goals and objectives, the
meeting is a vehicle for many activities, from
problem solving to interdepartmental interac-
tions. Given their utility, it is not surprising that
meeting load (i.e., the frequency and length of
meetings) has steadily surged in the last few
decades (Mosvick & Nelson, 1987). Since a
1973 study by Mintzberg, which found that the
majority of a manager’s typical workday (69%)
was spent in meetings, more recent surveys
have suggested that meeting loads are increas-
ing. Mosvick and Nelson (1987), for example,
reported that relative to the 1960s, the average
executive participated in twice as many meet-
ings in the 1980s. Tobia and Becker (1990), in
a survey of 1,900 business leaders, found that
almost 72% of individuals currently spend more
time in meetings than they did 5 years ago. In
addition, more than 49% surveyed expect to be
spending even more time in meetings 4 years
from now.
Given these statistics indicating the rise in
frequency of and time spent in meetings, it
behooves us to ask whether increased meeting
load is indeed beneficial for the organization
and the individual employee. To the extent that
meetings help organizations and employees
achieve their goals, their utility is quite appar-
ent. The question remains, however, as to
whether an ever-increasing meeting load may
affect the employee at the individual, psycho-
logical level. In our search of the extant litera-
ture, we found no research that addresses the
psychological effects of meeting load; in fact,
we found that few empirical studies have been
conducted on the phenomenon of the meeting
itself. In taking heed of Schwartzman’s (1986)
declaration to examine the meeting as a topic in
its own right, with the present study we attempt
to contribute to research by examining the meet-
ing load of a sample of employees and how it
affects how these employees feel at the end of
each day, for 5 days.
We propose that despite the fact that meet-
ings may help achieve work-related goals, hav-
ing too many meetings and spending too much
time in meetings per day may have negative
effects on the individual. In other words, we
fully acknowledge the work-related benefits and
the utility of meetings, but we further suggest a
main effect for meeting load on the individual at
Alexandra Luong, Department of Psychology, University
of Minnesota Duluth; Steven G. Rogelberg, Department of
Psychology, University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
The research described here was supported with funds
from an Academic Challenge Grant awarded to the Indus-
trial–Organizational Psychology Program at Bowling Green
State University by the Ohio Board of Regents. We thank
Peter Warr and Des Leach for their insightful comments on
a draft of this article.
Correspondence concerning this article should be ad-
dressed to Alexandra Luong, Department of Psychology,
University of Minnesota Duluth, 320 Bohannon Hall, 1207
Ordean Court, Duluth, MN 55812. E-mail: aluong@
d.umn.edu
Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice Copyright 2005 by the Educational Publishing Foundation
2005, Vol. 9, No. 1, 58– 67 1089-2699/05/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/1089-2699.9.1.58
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