Physical or digital meeting? - A study of the choice between having physical or digital meetings

Abstract: Modern multinational corporations of today all face challenges associated with the phenomenon of globalisation and geographical dispersion. As a result, network forms of organisations have developed and with them a greater need to efficiently meet and communicate across vast distances has arisen. Recent technological advancements have facilitated the meeting and communication transformation from physical business meetings, to digital meetings through the use of information communication technology. The research devoted to the factors influencing the decision of having physical or digital meetings is limited. Therefore, this study aims to contribute to the literary academic field by analysing existing theory and conducting a qualitative case study complemented by a quantitative importance rating of each factor. The research approach employed is therefore a case study design with one focal case, in the consumer goods industry, and complemented by four reference cases in different industries. The findings explain why employees in MNCs have internal physical meetings and how the decision between physical or digital meetings is made. The theoretical framework includes theories on meetings and communication in dispersed networks, business relationships as well as existing research on factors influencing meeting format. The study then describes empirical findings related to the research question from both the main case company and the four reference cases in order to compare and contrast them against the literature review as well as one another. The study allows for some main conclusions to be drawn from the material, including the importance rating of influencing factors that shows the purpose of the meeting as the most influential factor. The study also identified an additional factor influencing the meeting format; the number of participants in a meeting. Another significant finding is the realisation that the most important factors are the situational ones that organisations cannot easily manipulate, whereas the contextual factors that can be altered more easily are considered less important. All in all the factors need to be considered together and in relation to each other as they all form one complex web of influences for the decision to conduct a physical or digital meeting.