PowerPoint due in 16hrs

International Journal of Business Communication

2018, Vol. 55(1) 69 –93 © The Author(s) 2015

Reprints and permissions: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav

DOI: 10.1177/2329488415589102 journals.sagepub.com/home/job

Article

Questions as Interactional Resource in Team Decision Making

Kristin Halvorsen1

Abstract This study explores how professionals in an operational planning meeting in the petroleum industry employ questions as an interactional resource in team decision making. The empirical site is characterized by considerable uncertainty and frequent change as it is tightly bound to the sharp end of high-risk industrial production. A weekly meeting for optimizing well service plans was observed and recorded on nine occasions. The data were analyzed within the framework of Activity Analysis, emphasizing the relevance of the activity type for the analysis and interpretation of interactional features, in this case questions. Structural and interactional mapping of the meeting data provide an interpretive frame in which the role of questions in decision-making trajectories can be understood in light of the activity-specific context. The article presents one extended decision-making episode from opening to closure to show how questions play a role in decision making in this setting. Analysis shows that the questions are characterized by being brief and unelaborated, topically implicit, and fact-oriented, which is seen to be an efficient format in a setting that requires frequent adjustments of the commitments made in response to changes in the operational situation. While questions can function collaboratively by opening up the conversational space and seeking the expertise of others, they are also seen to function strategically, driving the decision-making trajectory in specific directions by setting the agenda and constraining subsequent interaction. The study contributes to the investigation of team decision making and professional reasoning in a setting rarely studied from a discourse analytic viewpoint.

Keywords discourse analysis, activity analysis, decision making, workplace discourse, business meetings, questions

1NTNU Social Research and Department of Language and Literature, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway

Corresponding Author: Kristin Halvorsen, NTNU Social Research, Dragvoll Allé 38B, 7491 Trondheim, Norway. Email: [email protected]

589102 JOBXXX10.1177/2329488415589102International Journal of Business CommunicationHalvorsen research-article2015

70 International Journal of Business Communication 55(1)

Introduction

Decision making has been at the heart of organizational analysis for half a century, and it is no less so today as the contemporary organization has moved toward increasing emphasis on team work and cross-professional interaction. Discourse studies have made significant contributions to our understanding of team decision making, perhaps most importantly through the analysis of local workplace interaction (see, e.g., Atkinson, 1995; Boden, 1994; Cicourel, 1968; Sarangi & Roberts, 1999; Silverman, 1987). Studies of interaction show that it is often difficult to identify when a decision has been made and even whether a decision has been made. Decision-making pro- cesses are incremental activities consisting of many minor steps, and a decision can rarely be connected to one singular statement: “Decisions are virtually never stand- alone affairs but rather are part of a sequence of ‘tinkering’ with some organizational problem or policy” (Boden, 1994, p. 182). The interest of the present article is pre- cisely such continuous organizational decision making wherein decisions are cumula- tive, transitory, and constantly tweaked to accommodate situational changes and new information.

The research site is a planning meeting in the oil and gas industry, where decisions regarding the sequence and priority of service jobs on offshore oil and gas wells are made. Professionals from up to six different departments meet weekly to coordinate and make decisions based on the current situation offshore. The operational planning onshore must continuously respond to the changes in production offshore, as the pri- oritization of tasks might change, the sequencing of tasks will need rethinking, and planned tasks might have to be rescheduled or put on hold. This continuous adjustment work is a form of decision making that crosses department boundaries and areas of expertise, and the decisions made are all potentially short-lived and fraught with uncertainties. This kind of contingent decision making, taking place at the level of production in a high-risk industry, has rarely been described in the discourse analytic literature on team decision making.

The meeting data are approached from the framework of Activity Analysis (Sarangi, 2010a), which foregrounds the activity type (Levinson, 1979) and its structure as an integral part of analyzing interactional sequences. Systematic mapping of structural and interactional characteristics of the activity type, combined with ethnographic data and fieldwork, provides a comprehensive interpretive framework for the analysis of specific discourse features. Halvorsen and Sarangi (2015) have considered the man- agement of participant roles in the same meeting data and revealed characteristic fea- tures of the participant framework. The analytic focus of the current study is the functions of questions as interactional resources for decision making in this specific activity type.

The article will first provide a review of discourse analytic studies of team decision making, including the notion of professional reasoning and a brief review of the func- tions of questions in institutional discourse. Before describing the data and methods, an account of the analytical framework of Activity Analysis will be provided. The analytic section will follow one decision-making episode from opening to closure to

Halvorsen 71

trace the role of questions in the decision-making trajectory. Following this, the dis- cussion will focus on the role and function of questions at crucial moments in the decision-making trajectory and how questions can be seen to function strategically in this particular activity type.

Literature Review

In contrast to traditional rationalistic perspectives, mainly from the fields of econom- ics and scientific management, social science approaches have described organiza- tional decision making comprehensively and critically (Hodgkinson & Starbuck, 2008): from Simon’s (1957) early concept of bounded rationality to issues of power and politics (Cyert & March, 1963), ambiguity and contradiction (March & Olsen, 1976), and sequential processes (Mintzberg, Raisinghani, & Théorêt, 1976). Discourse studies have contributed to this theorizing by showing empirically how decision mak- ing is not only rationally but also socially and interactionally bounded. Boden (1994) argued persuasively that the persistent focus on cognitive elements of choice processes in the study of decision making ignores the temporal, spatial, sequential, and interac- tional aspects that dominate organizational life. Decision making in organizational settings cannot be reduced exclusively to technical rules or context-free inference. Huisman (2001) calls for confronting decision-making theories with empirical data from actual talk. Analysis of the discourse strategies that participants employ provides evidence to the situated nature of decision making and the many discursive balancing acts performed by organizational members. However, there is still a need for further empirical studies of team discourse and team decision making across a variety of workplace contexts. Although a range of different sites have been studied, such as education, business, health, and social care, there are still relatively few studies within each empirical domain (for a systematic literature review, cf. Halvorsen, 2010).

The empirical site for this study, operational planning, is tightly bound to the sharp end of high-risk industrial production, a kind of setting that is rarely studied from a discourse analytic viewpoint. Discourse studies of team decision making have ana- lyzed, among others, management team meetings (Clifton, 2009; Huisman, 2001; Kwon, Clarke, & Wodak, 2009; Sanders, 2007), which will always be somewhat removed from the everyday details of the “shop floor,” and department meetings (Menz, 1999) working on allocating time and resources to project work. Closer to the opera- tional setting are perhaps studies from the medical domain and cross-professional rounds in hospitals (Cicourel, 1990; Graham, 2009), where the impact of social struc- tures and organizational hierarchies on professional interaction and decision making have been focused on. In addition, several studies analyze meeting data from teams with specific and bounded functions, such as committees and conferences of different kind. In the educational setting, school committee meetings (Hjörne, 2005; Mehan, 1983) and university curriculum meetings (Barnes, 2007) have been studied. Similarly, in health and social care settings, admissions conferences for surgery and rehabilitation (Hughes & Griffiths, 1997), nursing home placement meetings (Nikander, 2003), and child protection conferences (Hall, Slembrouck, & Sarangi, 2006) have been studied.

72 International Journal of Business Communication 55(1)

From a business setting, an “extra recognition and awards team” in an American corpo- ration has been studied (Wasson, 2000). These meeting contexts have some similarities to the plan optimization meeting as they are meetings going beyond each participant’s primary work activities. However, operational planning takes place during ongoing operations and attends to the continuous planning of operational tasks, which makes it more exposed to the frequent changes in production.

Huisman (2001) presents an interactional definition of decisions, that an utterance can be considered to “do a decision” if the commitment of relevant participants to a future state of affairs is achieved. The operational plan itself is a representation, in the form of a Gantt diagram, of a series of commitments to future action, organized in time and related to the allocation of resources. In their efforts to optimize the plan, the par- ticipants in the plan optimization meeting are concerned with optimizing these com- mitments and continuously adjust them in accordance with the changes offshore. Operational work has been described as consisting of “a continuous flow of circum- stances to which adjustments and adaptations are continually made” (Almklov & Antonsen, 2014, p. 480). Building on this, the current study looks at decision making as processes in which commitments to future state of affairs or future actions are sought. The focus is not on the decision outcome as such but rather on the decision process, located in the interactional sequences, “the laminations of actions and reac- tions” (Boden, 1994, p. 22) of workplace talk. Taking an interactional approach allows for systematically exploring the processes through which such commitments are made, challenged, negotiated, or changed. In an operational setting, decisions are relatively “small,” related to the day-to-day operations, and less concerned with larger strategic commitments. What counts as a decision will depend on the communicative norms of the group (Huisman, 2001), and it is therefore useful to study the trajectories in work- place interaction that allow professionals to align and commit to future action, whether this is in short-term, contingent ways or in long-term, more fixed ways.

For the purposes of the current study, the themes of professional reasoning and studies on the production and assessment of evidence in team decision making are particularly relevant. Although these studies have mainly been conducted in the con- text of health and social care, they provide a valuable backdrop for the analysis of questions in the plan optimization meeting. Interaction has been shown to play a crucial part in establishing a piece of information as evidence and thus as a valid basis for decisions on diagnoses and subsequent action or treatment. Cicourel (1990) shows how physicians assess the adequacy of medical information on the basis of the per- ceived credibility of the source, which in turn is constrained and guided by the profes- sionals’ general and local knowledge of social structure. Also within medicine, Måseide (2006) displays the emerging quality of medical evidence, both generated and made applicable discursively by the participants. Questions play a crucial role in the gathering and assessment of evidence. Similarly, Sarangi (1998) examines infor- mation as evidence related to case construction in social work, arguing that the evi- dential status of information is related to its reportability. Information and evidence are interactional products, generated discursively and requiring discourse for its applicability. This view challenges traditional approaches to evidence and is useful

Halvorsen 73

for understanding the phases of decision making that precede decision announcement and adoption.

The functions of questions remain largely unexplored in the context of decision making among groups of professionals. A few studies on the function of questions in meeting talk in general can be found, but without a specific focus on decision making. Holmes and Chiles (2010) study questions as control devices for those in positions of power, enabling managers to maintain control of the agenda and the direction of the discussion, constructing authority and a leadership role. Ford (2010) takes a different approach, seeing questions as actions that gain the questioner entry into participation and that open up participation space for others.

The communicative form of questioning is performed through many kinds of syn- tactic forms that “do questioning,” just as there are interrogative forms that do not do questioning, such as rhetorical questions. When defining a question, one should take into consideration both functional and sequential aspects. Freed and Ehrlich (2010) define questions as utterances that (a) solicit (and/or are treated by the recipient as soliciting) information, confirmation, or action and (b) are delivered in such a way as to create a slot for the recipient to produce a responsive turn (p. 6). It is useful to con- sider questioning sequences as three-part structures involving also a third slot for the questioner to acknowledge or elaborate on the response given (a sequences described by Sinclair & Coulthard, 1975, in terms of Initiation, Response, and Feedback for classroom interaction). The three-part sequence provides space for the questioner to speak again and opens up for shifts in participation. The current study will focus pri- marily on the first pair part of the adjacency pairs, the questions, but attention will be paid to sequential aspects and positioning in two-/three-part question–answer sequences.

Recurring themes in the study of questions have been the differential speaking rights afforded by questions and the interactional asymmetry created. Recent works on the role of questions in institutional settings, however, focus on the multifaceted func- tions of questions and the need to nuance the association to interactional control and issues of power (Freed & Ehrlich, 2010). Taking the notion of activity type as a point of departure, Levinson (1979) shows that the discourse properties involved in the defi- nition of a question are subject to the nature of the activities in which questions are used: The role and thus the nature of a question are in part dependent on the matrix of the language game (p. 378). This has more recently been illustrated in genetic counsel- ing sessions in which Sarangi (2010b) interprets back-channeling cues as pseudo ques- tions that encourage reflection-based decision making on the part of the client. The role and function of questions are, in other words, dependent on the activity in which they take place, and this insight is fundamental to the analytical framework employed in this study.

Data and Method

The data for the article are part of a larger study on team decision making in the work- place. The author conducted fieldwork with an international oil and gas operator,

74 International Journal of Business Communication 55(1)

attending and recording key meetings in operational planning. The plan optimization meeting was observed on nine occasions, of which five meetings were video recorded. A single camera was used, mounted on the top of the presentation screen in the front of the room. Four more meetings have later been audio recorded without the researcher being present. The data from the plan optimization meeting total 5 hours of recorded talk, which was subsequently transcribed and anonymized following usual guidelines for research ethics (see Appendix A for list of transcription symbols used).

Specific to the data in this study is the proximity to operations, often called the “sharp end” of oil and gas production, and thereby also the nearness to the immediate consequences of potential problems or mistakes in production offshore. The stakes are high in terms of both safety and production, as operations happen in an explosive environment far from the shore and with production of great financial value. Within the onshore operations unit, the plan optimization meeting is a weekly meeting for prioritizing and sequencing well service tasks, with the goal of maximizing production while ensuring the technical integrity (safety) of the oil and gas wells. Operational planning is a process of continuous tweaking of the work plans as changes happen offshore. In the case of well service (also called well intervention or well workover), the plans concern several roving crews that cover a field of installations, travelling from one platform to another performing tasks according to the plan made onshore. Each platform has a number of wells that at different times require service or interven- tion work, so there is a constant prioritization and sequencing of tasks based on techni- cal integrity and the well’s production potential.

Ten participants from up to six different departments attend the meeting. The meet- ing is conducted in English, but only two to three participants are native speakers of English; for the rest, English is a second or foreign language. The participants are both managers and engineers with different areas of responsibility and different decisional authority. The meeting chair represents the Production Optimization group and serves a facilitator role in this meeting as she does not have decisional authority or a manager role in any of the present departments. The participants are seated in two rows around a circular table, facing a wall with two screens displaying operational plans (Gantt charts showing well service tasks against time). Figure 1 depicts the room setup for the meeting.

Of specific importance for offshore oil and gas production are the highly complex interdependencies between tasks offshore. All activities on an offshore platform share a confined, limited space, for work, storage, and crew accommodation. In prioritizing and sequencing well service tasks, considerations concerning access to material, equipment, and crew need to be made, as well as coordination with other interrelated operational tasks. Drilling might be working on the deck, which prevents well service from accessing certain wells, or there might be crane work lifting heavy equipment over the well area, which restricts work access for safety reasons. Adding to this complex picture of interdependencies are the frequent changes in operations offshore. These can be due to unforeseen events such as a halt in the drilling process, delay with vendors, mistakes or unexpected holdups, or simply adverse weather conditions pre- venting some work from being done and consequently causing reallocation of

Halvorsen 75

resources. This in turn forces adjustments and rescheduling of the well service plan. Decisions in this setting are, in other words, potentially short-lived and will always be contingent on the many interdependencies of operations. The outcome of decision- making episodes in this meeting is typically a commitment to a specific task prioritiza- tion or sequence, or a commitment to postponing or delegating the decision in the cases where the meeting lacks sufficient information or the necessary decisional authority.

Analytical Framework

Seeing the function of questions as also depending on the “activity type” (Levinson, 1979) in which it takes place is an important point of departure for this study. The analytical framework is Activity Analysis, as proposed by Sarangi (2000, 2010a), building on Levinson’s (1979) notion. Activity types are culturally recognized, goal- oriented events with specific constraints on participants in terms of contributions, style, and structure. According to Levinson, such constraints are sources for activity- specific inferences and thus have implications for the meaning and functions of dis- course strategies. In other words, the structure of the activity in which interaction takes place has implications for the sequential organization of talk-in-interaction and the role and function of discourse features. This suggests that ethnographic insights into organizational contexts and institutional roles of participants are significant for con- textualizing discourse data but are complemented by systematic analysis of the activ- ity type to provide solid grounding for the interpretation of interactional data.

While the analysis of questions to follow builds on key insights from Conversation Analysis, with concepts such as adjacency pairs and sequentiality, the Activity Analysis will consider how sequences of talk are embedded in the overall activity of the plan

Figure 1. Room setup for the plan optimization meeting.

76 International Journal of Business Communication 55(1)

optimization meeting. While a Conversation Analysis study is primarily concerned with the local-sequential context of interaction, this study places a greater emphasis on the larger context of professional culture and incorporates systematic mapping at the level of the activity. The structural and interactional features of the discourse data are mapped to provide systematic descriptions of the recurring and characteristic features of the meeting as an activity type (cf. Appendix B for examples). The mapping exer- cise is a useful approach for the researcher to familiarizing herself with the data, for identifying patterns and variability in the structures of the encounter, and for identify- ing recurrent discourse features that might be of interest to pursue in more detailed analysis. The systematic mapping of the plan optimization meeting, combined with the fieldwork and observations, provides an interpretive frame in which the analysis of the function of questions can find a solid foundation for rich interpretation. Structural and interactional maps can be carried out at the level of the entire activity type, over one meeting, or at the level of distinct phases. For the present article, the interactional mapping covers the one meeting in which the decision-making case takes place. After presenting results from this descriptive analytic phase, the detailed analysis will fol- low one decision-making episode from opening to closure to show the functions of questions in decision making in this setting.

The analysis of the use of questions builds on a previous study on the same meeting data (Halvorsen & Sarangi, 2015) that explores how the management of participant roles in the plan optimization meeting is accomplished situationally and in activity- specific ways. This reveals how participants shift dynamically across activity roles and discourse roles in the meeting, as any participant can potentially adopt more or less any role at a given point in the interaction. The activity type thus affords a flexible utilization of the participants’ broad range of competencies and experiences, offering the meeting participants the opportunity to cumulatively add to the joint production of decisions. Furthermore, the chair was found to do limited amounts of “chairing work” (for a discussion of the discourse type of chairing, cf. Angouri & Marra, 2010) but contributed significantly on the discussion of the technical and plan-related issues of the meeting. These findings serve as a backdrop in the following analytic section in which the functions of questions are explored in one specific decision-making episode.

Data Analysis

The structural and interactional mapping that was undertaken shows that the activity type follow an overarching phase structure that moves from one platform’s operational plan to the next in a recurring sequence (cf. Appendix B, Figure B1). However, the chronology of these phases, and the length and complexity of each phase, will vary significantly according to the plan changes and rescheduling needed in response to the offshore situation. In some cases, the decisions to be made are tightly coupled to resources and tasks across platforms; thus, several platforms will be discussed in the same assessment phase. In the decision-making episode below, this is the case as the question of fitting in an additional task on Platform B has implications for the planning

Halvorsen 77

of tasks on Platform A as well. However, after closing such a cross-referring episode, the meeting generally returns to the plan and the platform chronology.

Within each platform sequence, the platform to be discussed is introduced and sta- tus information on the situation offshore is given (cf. Appendix B, Figure B2). Generally, the introduction is given by the chair, but sometimes it is initiated by other participants (as in the episode below in which the Well Service Manager (WSM) initi- ates the move to the next platform). The status on the platform is then given by a par- ticipant who holds the latest update on the issues related to the specific platform. This phase leads into a problem formulation or a decision proposal that needs to be handled by the meeting. The formulation of the problem or the proposal can be initiated by several participants, including the chair, but frequently this is done by one of the man- agers. This phase is followed by an assessment phase, which includes the presentation and elicitation of information, generation of options or alternatives, and assessments of information and options by the participants. The assessment phase is sometimes very long and can involve a range of issues related to the problem or proposal (e.g., crew access, boat availability, implications for other tasks on the plan, etc.). The deci- sion-making phase is when a commitment to future action or state of affairs is formu- lated, sometimes explicitly, but frequently also implicitly. The outcome can be a decision regarding the sequence of tasks on the platform, or it can be a decision to postpone or delegate the decision to someone with appropriate decision authority. The decision-making episode is closed by explicit or implicit decision adoption.1

Figure B3 (Appendix B) shows the distribution of turns between participants in the chosen meeting, and we can see that all the participants and departments present in the meeting contribute by taking speaking turn in a relatively evenly distributed manner. Three participants dominate quantitatively, and these are the Chair, the WSM, and the Production Optimization Manager (POM). These participants are key participants in terms of their have responsibilities for the optimization of the operational plan through their departmental roles as being accountable as managers. However, taken together, the two production optimization engineers (POEs) are shown to contribute with equal number of turns as these managers. Based on the activity mapping, the diverse group of participants present seem to have access to the floor in the plan optimization meet- ing, and they follow a relatively loose phase structure that is driven by what the current situation offshore calls for in terms of decision making.

Among the interactional resources available to the participants, for example, asser- tions or hypothetical formulations, the decisional talk in this activity type is character- ized by frequent use of questions. Turning now to the chosen decision-making episode, the role of questions will be demonstrated in terms of their function in the interactional negotiations toward a commitment to future action. The episode is a long one for this meeting, lasting for a little over 13 minutes, so the analysis will focus on three selected excerpts that are significant in the episode. The topic for the episode is the decision whether to fit a new task into the plan. The option of doing a stimulation job on Well B8 has come up, which involves injecting chemicals into the well to improve the flow of fluids, which in turn will increase production from the well. This task is not cur- rently in the plan, but a proposal has been made to fit it into the plan in between other

78 International Journal of Business Communication 55(1)

tasks. Should they prioritize it, this well has significant production potential, but since crew resources are limited, prioritizing the job will be at the expense of something else, particularly activity on Platform A, which is also highly prioritized.

Excerpt 1 is the opening sequence of the episode. The meeting has just finished discussing issues related to one specific platform and the Drilling Engineer (DRE) responsible for that area is leaving the meeting. As he leaves, the WSM is quick to launch the next issue for discussion, namely, Platform B, and his manner of identifying the specific problem is through a series of questions (highlighted in bold):

Excerpt 1 (B8, 4/27, 21:55)

Participants:

DRE = Drilling Engineer

POM = Production Optimization Manager

WSM = Well Service Manager

Chair= Chair/Coordinator Production Optimization

PSM = Production Manager Subsurface

POE = Production Optimization Engineer

253. DRE2 thank you very much ((leaves the room)) 254. POM thank you 255. WSM = but I think maybe go to platform B 256. Chair [platform B) 257. WSM [Platform B] is e:h [some] 258. Chair [yeah] ((pulls up the correct plan on the shared screen)) 259. WSM complicated things uh ((turns backwards towards DRE and PSM on back row)) but uh- 260. DRE °@@ [@°] 261. POM [oh?] 262. WSM ((turns back to the table)) could be (.) 263. DRE yes 264. WSM =platform B 265. POM =platform B 266. WSM =Platform B is- ((turns to back row)) uh concerning this u:h uh stimulation job ((turns back to table)) who is doing it, are we doing it, are- are we taking a crew to platform B? 267. POM what well are we talking about?

Halvorsen 79

((clarification by several participants, inaudible)) 268. Chair we’re talking about [B20 B22 B8] 269. WSM [we have uh- yeah]and 8 yeah 270. POE2 actually 18 271. Chair 8 and18 (. .)

WSM is a key participant in the meeting as he has the overall responsibility for the well service plan and the well service crews offshore. In Turn 255, he is quick to launch the new topic as the other participant is leaving. He takes on a chairing role and proposes that the meeting turns to Platform B, previewing that there are some difficul- ties with this issue (Turn 259). Low laughter from the DRE (Turn 260) suggests that the issue is known and possibly burdened with some tension (cf. Adelswärd, 1989, on unilateral laughter). WSM then formulates the problem of who should do this added stimulation job by first previewing the topic (Turn 266) and then posing three ques- tions (“Who is doing it?” “Are we doing it?” and “Are we taking a crew to Platform B?”). His questions imply that there are several options as to who can do this job. The pronoun “we” refers to his own unit, the Well Service department, and the added emphasis suggests that there are others who can do the job, the “others” being the Drilling department, as will become clear. The questions are not directed at any one participant or posed for someone to answer directly, and the series of questions gives a sense of urgency or insistence. From the implicitness of the first question (“this u:h uh stimulation job”), we can assume that this particular job has been discussed prior to the meeting, and the questions function together as a form of gist formulation (Heritage & Watson, 1979) of this preceding talk, presenting the essence of the problem that they have to solve. Following this problem identification, POM poses a question calling for clarification of what job WSM is talking about, and five turns follow in which this is clarified by several participants and summarized by the chair (Turns 268-271). Through his questioning, WSM has established the nature of the decision that they have to make, and he has implied that there are more than one option available.

This introductory sequence is followed by a 3-minute long account by the DRE (not included here) concerning the technical situation offshore, specifically some problems they are having with another well, B22. He closes his account with a suggestion that Well Service handles the B8 job as the Drilling team is very busy solving this particu- lar problem. WSM responds to this by explaining the consequences this would have for Well Services, primarily that they will have to relocate the crew on Platform A, which would include postponing highly prioritized work. He concludes that Drilling should do the B8 job. So the table is set with two opposing positions when we enter the next excerpt in which one of the POEs (POE1) proposes that the B8 job gets done before drilling starts their procedure on the problem well (involving rigging up a blow- out preventer and riser). This proposal would require everyone to turn around quickly and get the job done within the next day or two. The proposal triggers questions from the Production Subsurface Manager (PSM) and the other POE (POE2):

80 International Journal of Business Communication 55(1)

Excerpt 2 (B8, 4/27, 26:22)

Participants: Chair= Chair/Coordinator Production Optimization PSM = Production Subsurface Manager POE = Production Optimization Engineer DRE = Drilling Engineer POM = P’roduction Optimization Manager

278. POE1 and B8- but we should try and do B8 before you need to rig up the BOP and riser again but then 279. DRE yeah w- [uh] 280. POE1 [we] can’t do it for the next month 281. DRE that’s:- that’s right. If we- if we have to go pull the tubing on 22 then that’s a two- two three weeks job basically. (.) So- but if you want to go do B8 we should have been done or- sh- like now huh, . then we need to do it in a c- within two- 282. POE1 couple of days 283. Chair yes 284. DRE couple of days. (. .) because you- you don’t get access to it after- if we have to rig up the riser on 22 you can’t rig up the xxx on uh- 285. PSM was there any issues about putting that on uh (.) [injection?] ((looking towards POE1)) 286. POE1 [it is on] injection. It is on injection. 287. PSM so there is no limit on uh- 288. POE1 [reduced injection] 289. Chair [reduced injection] 290. POE1 it’s only injecting twelve thousand [xx] 291. PSM [so] after we stimulate we can put it on full? 292. POE1 mm (.) 293. POE2 that’s going to be about forty? ((looks at POE1)) 294. POE1 yeah thirty thousand plus at least 295. POM that will give us a good boost in production 296. POE1 so we- we- we should try and get it done now before we lose the access (.) if you need to rig up the BOP and riser. (.) 297. DRE1 then we should get a crew over 298. Chair mm °and a boat°

Halvorsen 81

The proposal launched by POE1 to do the B8 job before Drilling starts repairing the problem well (Turn 278) has not been mentioned before. She orients her utterance to the DRE (“you”) who supports and elaborates her proposal by stressing the impor- tance of timing (Turns 281 and 284). Through Turns 278 to 284 they coconstruct a proposal resting on the urgency to act quickly and take advantage of this opportunity. This triggers the questions from the PSM, who is responsible for the decision made on this issue but necessarily relies on the information and assessments from the range of departments present. In Turn 285, he asks a simple, information-seeking question regarding well B8 (“was there any issues about putting that on uh (.) [injection?]”) Injection refers here to the process of injecting liquids into the reservoir in order to maintain pressure. The question is implicit in its reference to B8, and he does not explicitly target a particular participant but looks in the direction of2 POE1, who responds before he has completed his utterance (Turn 286). She confirms the relevance of the question with a short, unelaborated response, and PSM acknowledges receipt by probing further into the topic. His second question initiates an upshot formulation (“so there is no limit on uh-,” Turn 287), fixing the sense of the previous sequence and drawing conclusions of the “talk-thus-far” (Heritage & Watson, 1979), previewed with the conjunction “so.” He is interrupted by POE1 and the Chair who simultaneously provide additional detail to his first question about injection, with a brief elaboration from POE1 (Turn 290). PSM goes on to present the upshot more precisely, still in the questioning format (“so after we stimulate we can put it on full?” Turn 291). He for- mulates the implication that if they choose to do the B8 job, the well can be “put on full,” that is, it can be produced to its full potential. The formulation makes a confirma- tion or disconfirmation relevant as a next action, speaking to the adequacy of the for- mulation, and the questioning format creates a strong demand for a response. The response here is given very briefly and without elaboration from POE1 (“mm,” Turn 292). Through this line of questioning, PSM has established the current status of the well and has contributed to the assessment of the proposal by eliciting information that strengthens the proposal to in fact prioritize the B8 job.

As the possibility of full production of B8 now has been established, the other POE present (POE2) adds to this assessment with another question (“that’s going to be around forty?” Turn 293). He is here talking about the production potential of this well and the number of barrels of oil equivalents that this well can produce when it is “on full.” He is suggesting that it is in the range of 40,000 barrels but frames it as a ques- tion with rising intonation. This question can also be read as a formulation of implica- tion, an upshot of what the preceding talk means for the objective of production optimization. He is calling for a confirmation of his estimate through the questioning format, but through his question, he also provides a formulation that explicitly renders visible what is at stake, namely, significant production numbers. POE1 confirms, but he nuances his estimate (Turn 294), and the POM adds an assessment of this informa- tion, making further explicit to the team the implications for the overall goal of pro- duction optimization (Turn 295). Together, these last turns from Production Optimization participants contribute to strengthening POE1’s initial proposal to do B8 before drilling rigs up. And at this point, POE1 returns to her proposal again, repeating the urgency of the decision (Turn 296), and yet again DRE supports this position by

82 International Journal of Business Communication 55(1)

formulating the implication in terms of crew allocation (“then we should get a crew over,” Turn 297).

The decision-making episode on well B8 could have ended here as it seems there is a feasible option available that several participants support and that will yield increased production. The arguments have been made for the benefits of prioritizing B8, but as it turns out, this proposal is not endorsed by key participants. Neither PSM, who estab- lished the production potential inherent in prioritizing B8 through his questioning, nor WSM, who is in charge of the Well Service crew offshore, seem to be willing to jump on this proposal and relocate the crew from Platform A. Instead, a range of other issues related to the decision are brought up by several of the participants, for 4 more min- utes. For the purposes of the present argument, we will skip directly to the last section of the episode in which a decision is called for, announced, and finally adopted. In the next excerpt, as the other participants seem to lean toward prioritizing the B8 job and relocate the well service crew from Platform A to B, WSM expresses doubt and calls for further evaluation of the consequences of such a decision. The discussion seems to have come to a halt, when the Chair turns directly to the PSM and calls for a decision. Instead of eliciting a response or a preference, this triggers more questions from PSM, as well as from three other participants.

Excerpt 3 (B8, 4/27, 30:23)

Participants:

Chair = Chair & Coordinator Production Optimization

PSM = Production Subsurface Manager

WSM = Well Service Manager

POE = Production Optimization Engineer

POM = Production Optimization Manager

345. WSM but you have to also evaluate then ((points to the screen)) do we have better jobs on platform A than on B?=uh be- because we are delaying the whole thing on uh- on uh- A by doing this ((turned forward, looks towards POM, WIM, Chair)) so maybe we should go in and put up a case or whatever [I’m not sure whatever- xxx-] ((Inaudible, several participants overlap)) 346. POM the core thing is that we don’t have a drilling rig on A (.) so (.) we have better access there 347. Chair =yeah 348. POE2 =yeah that’s true 350. Chair but it is- it is your call I mean do you want [to-] ((to PSM))

Halvorsen 83

351. PSM [but] could drilling take B8? (.) the restim? [Or the stimulation?] ((looks in the direction of the WSM, Chair and POE1, not DRE who sits next to him)) 352. WSM [I mean that] I mean that. ((“that is my opinion,” direct translation from Norwegian, ‘jeg mener det’)) 353. PSM so we [can do- can-] 354. WSM [xx both] 355. PSM can we do B8 and keep on on platform A? 356. WSM =yeah (. .) 357. POM or do we have someone extra we can send out for a couple of days? 358. WSM no because we have extra out now for one that is on sick leave you see so it has been a little bit hard to-to get more- be- I could check it. [°I’ll check it.°] 359. POE2 [when is] the platform C operation finished? ((Overlapping talk from several participants about the C operation end date))

360. PSM but that’s the (name) crew 361. WSM no but the- but the C crew we need- we cannot just take that there is lots of other jobs we have to discuss °concerning that° 362. PSM yeah (.) so but if you have some people you can send out that would be the best. °If you:-° ((to WSM)) 363. WSM I can- I can check=I am not positive o:r I’m not sure that we can man- uh make it but I can see °I can see° 364. POE1 so how many days are we talking about? two days? two three days? 365. WSM =well it depends how many how many- if we are only doing 8 for example 366. POM 8 is the most important one as I see it 367. Chair [but but xxx-] 368. WSM [I need to check and see otherwise-] 369. Chair we need crew for platform E as well [and xx-] 370. WSM [yes] and on platform T we need crew and we we have lots of- yeah. ((Turns omitted, humor about need for more crew)) 371. POM okay I think we need some checking [and some thinking]

84 International Journal of Business Communication 55(1)

In Turn 345, WSM distances himself from the discussion so far, with the disagree- ment marker (“but”) and his pronominal choice, “you.” His question functions rhetori- cally, not prompting an answer, and he moves directly to an explanation for why this question needs to be asked (“we are delaying the whole thing”). He also provides a suggestion for action, hesitantly suggesting that they “put up a case,” which means that they analyze more systematically why one of the options is better than the other. This could be read as a weak proposal to delay the decision, but there is no immediate support given to this idea form the other participants. But with several participants overlapping and POM making a general comment about better access to the wells on Platform A (Turn 346), the discussion seems to have come to a halt.

At this point, the chair addresses PSM directly with a prefaced question (“but it is your call I mean do you want [to-],” Turn 350). She is placing the decisional responsi- bility with PSM and she calls him to decide by initiating a question asking for his pref- erence. Her question is interrupted by PSM, but instead of responding, he poses a question himself (“but could drilling take the B8?” Turn 351). His turn is marked as a reservation through the conjunction (“but”), and through his question, he relaunches the idea previously presented by WMS, that Drilling can do the B8 job. He frames it, how- ever, as a question in the hypothetical mood, which cushions the proposal quite clearly dispreferred by drilling (with their current problem well). WSM is the one who chooses to respond, briefly, but directly and unambiguously, almost insisting by repeating twice (“[I mean that] I mean that,” Turn 352). DRE does not attempt to respond. PSM contin- ues, first initiating a formulation of implication (“so we [can do- can-]” Turn 353); however, he self-repairs and redesigns his utterance to a straightforward, yes-no ques- tion (“can we do B8 and keep on on platform A?” Turn 355). While seeking confirma- tion, the question also functions as an upshot formulation of the previous adjacency pair, which clarified that Drilling could do B8. The choice of the present tense of the verb here, rather than the hypothetical, strengthens the force of the formulation.

These two questions from PSM mirror the design of his questions in Excerpt 2, when he first asked whether the well was on injection and then formulated the implica- tion of the response given. Now he has established that drilling hypothetically could do B8, and he then formulates the implications of this response, also in the form of a question. Through his second question, he formulates explicitly the implication that they in fact can stimulate B8 without having to interrupt the ongoing work on Platform A, but through the questioning design, he has also opened up the floor for a response. This sequence of questions, with information solicit and upshot formulation, repre- sents an interesting and powerful resource in professional reasoning, as it frames the information given in response to the first question as relevant and reportable, giving it evidential status for the specific decision. The interrogative form requires a confirma- tion of this evidential status from the interlocutors, and in this case, the last question is unequivocally answered by WSM with a plain confirmation (“=yeah”; cf. Hak & de Boer, 1996, for taxonomy of responses to formulations).

DRE is still not making any attempts to contribute despite his department being the topic of discussion. After a short lapse, the POM, instead of addressing this relaunched proposal by PSM, poses a question embedding an alternative option, namely, sending

Halvorsen 85

out extra Well Service crew (“or do we have someone extra we can send out for a couple of days?” Turn 357). He is prefacing his question with the discourse marker “or,” indicating a potential disagreement or a preferable alternative option. He uses the collaborative “we” of the meeting and downplays the strain on the Well Service depart- ment in terms of resources (“a couple of days”). He does not explicitly present a dis- agreement but rather proposes an alternative option in an affiliative manner. This question triggers a more elaborate response from WSM, who offers explanations for why sending out extra Well Service personnel might not be possible (Turn 358).

POE2 latches on to this discussion and presents a seemingly simple, information- seeking question (“when is the platform C operation finished?” Turn 359). This ques- tion embeds an implicit third proposal, namely, using the Platform C crew for the B8 job, and he is contributing to POM’s initiative to finding extra crew. This prompts overlapping responses from several participants regarding the end date for the C oper- ation, but WSM treats the question explicitly as an option and rejects it by implying that taking the C crew would require a greater discussion of priorities (Turn 361). PSM supports this assessment, but he also proceeds to support the proposal to send out more personnel (Turn 362). Despite his previous orientation to the possibility of Drilling doing B8, he now presents a hypothetical scenario in which Well Service provides extra resources. He explicitly states this as the preferred scenario, and he does not provide any explanation or justification for this preference. WSM responds by repeat- ing his uncertainty about the crew situation but also his intention of looking into it (Turn 363).

It seems the managers POM, PSM, and WSM are again moving away from drilling doing B8, and this last comment from WSM could have functioned as a preclosing marker leading to a decision to look for additional crew. However, POE1 poses yet another question concerning the length of the B8 job (“so how many days are we talk- ing about?” Turn 364), yet another quite simple information solicit, but she proceeds to offer suggested answers to her own question (“two days? two three days?”). POE1 is the one in Excerpt 2 who argued for prioritizing B8 and fitting it in before Drilling started rigging up. She is not requesting new information, as POM already indicated only six turns prior that this as a matter of “a couple of days” (Turn 357). Drawing attention again to the relative ease of the B8 job, her question can be seen to also serve a persuasive function leading toward her own decision proposal.

The tension over the use of crew resources resurfaces in Turns 367 and 368, when other platforms (E and T) are brought in as well. Following a humorous sequence about the lack of personnel, POM offers a preclosing statement (“okay I think we need some checking and some thinking,” Turn 369). His turn can be seen as a “candidate preclosing” (Barnes, 2007), as he takes on a chairing role and attempts to bring the topic to a close. Embedded in his formulation is a proposal to postpone the decision in order to explore the issues further, outside of the meeting. At this point, the meeting splits into several parallel floors, in which some are in English and some in Norwegian. WSM speaks directly to the Chair in Norwegian. After an attempt to summarize with- out managing to bring the meeting to shared attention, the chair finally closes the topic with a decision summary:

86 International Journal of Business Communication 55(1)

377. Chair [but then-] but then we have decided it’s a- we do not want to go from platform A- we don’t want to take uh the A crew we want to find another option. 378. WSM that’s the decision. 379. Chair yes mm 380. POM °that’s a good decision° 381. Chair °good decision° (.) okay. ((meeting moves on))

The decision is explicitly announced from the authorized role of the Chair and as the focus again is on the joint meeting. With a short-gist formulation, extracting and highlighting aspects of the previous discussion, the decision is presented in the nega- tive form, what the decision is not (“we do not want to go from platform A”), then very generally what the decision is (“we want to find another option”). This other option stays open and unexplained to the group. The final turns from WSM and POM explic- itly adopt the decision (“that’s the decision,” WSM, Turn 378; “that’s a good deci- sion,” POM, Turn 380). A long, complex episode of talk has come to an end; many issues and interdependencies have been considered; and only one element of the deci- sion has been landed, namely, that Platform A is still prioritized and the Well Service crew will not be relocated. However, whether Drilling will in fact do the stimulation job or whether Well Service will find extra resources remain unspecified.

Discussion

The initial mapping of the meeting data provides a systematic approach to the struc- tural and interactional features of the activity type across meetings and episodes. The activity type was found to be loosely structured across the phases, with relatively broad participation across hierarchies and departments. The accessibility of questions as interactional resource for all the participants might also be seen in relation to what Halvorsen and Sarangi (2015) found to be highly fluid and dynamic participation frameworks in this particular activity type. The plan optimization meeting as an activ- ity type allows for dynamic shifts in participation roles, with the chair also frequently shifting between the activity roles of chair and participant. The floor is in other words a relatively open and accessible one, for both engineers and managers.

The analysis has shown some characteristic features of questions in this setting. The questioning format is generally brief, efficient, and often topically implicit. There is minimal prefacing or framing of the questions and few elaborations, explanations, or justifications for why the question is relevant or important. Similarly, the responses given are equally short and fact-oriented, and there is no, or minimal, third slot verbal acknowledgement from the questioner. The contingent nature of decision making in this setting makes the brief and dense format functional. The continuous tweaking of the operational plan makes efficiency relevant, as unnecessary time spent on deliberat- ing issues might prove a waste of time if or when the situation offshore changes. The short and focused questions are communicatively efficient as they represent forceful

Halvorsen 87

communicative acts that require a response. The result is a style of questioning that covers a range of issues but that remains largely implicit in terms of professional rea- soning. The reasons for asking when the Platform C operation would be completed (Excerpt 3, Turn 359), as a possible solution for finding a crew for Platform B, was, as we saw, not explained, only implied. The response from the team showed that this inference was made, and the question was treated as a proposal.

In institutional settings, questions have often been seen as indications of interac- tional dominance on the part of professionals or managers. In this setting, however, which is a group of professionals with diverse authorities and responsibilities, the questions can also be seen as less forceful than, for example, declarative statements or imperatives. In questioning rather than asserting, participants can be heard to defer to the knowledge and expertise of the other participants, opening up the floor to the range of expertise present. The information solicited from PMS in Excerpts 2 and 3 are examples of this. Questions facilitate shifts in participation and therefore can also be seen to have a collaborative function. In the context of operational planning, this is particularly salient, as the complex interdependencies of operations make the partici- pants dependent on the group as a whole for a complete and updated understanding of the operational situation.

However, questions in this setting have also shown to function strategically as driv- ers in the decision-making episode. Through questions, the participants can address specific issues, set the agenda, and make visible the kinds of information that she or he finds relevant. We have seen the questions occur at crucial points in the interaction: in problem formulation (as in Excerpt 1), in assessment of options (Excerpts 2 and 3), and in launching alternative options (Excerpt 3). Some questions functioned as more or less veiled proposals of alternative options e.g., POM “or do we have someone extra we can send out for a couple of days?”). Others functioned rhetorically, as POE1 in Excerpt 3 pointed out the relative ease with which the future action can be executed (“so how many days are we talking about? two days? two three days?”).

Common for several of the questions was their metapragmatic function as formula- tions, and in the analytic commentary, they were labelled in line with Heritage and Watson’s (1979) subclasses of “gist” and “upshot” formulations. Formulations provide a candidate reading of preceding talk, they are a type of metapragmatic utterance that allow the participants to comment and to negotiate the meaning of what has been said thus far (Vásquez, 2010). Similar to questions, formulations typically occur as adja- cency pairs with a second part showing strong preference for agreement. Heritage and Watson (1979) found that confirmation was massively preferred in formulations, and we can see how formulations as discursive devices allow the participants to influence the decision-making trajectory in desired directions by providing a candidate reading and receiving confirmation of this interpretation. In this case, the formulations were designed in the interrogative form, which conveys even stronger force than the declar- ative form, obliging the interlocutors to respond and asking them to take a stand. In this sense, these forms of formulations constrain and project subsequent interaction,3 while at the same time opening up the floor to other participants.

88 International Journal of Business Communication 55(1)

Clifton (2009) shows how formulations can be a resource for managers or chair- persons to “do influence” in workplace meetings.4 In the plan optimization meeting, this device, in the form of questions, seems to be available for both managers and engineers. While questions enable participants to gather information, the evidential status of this information is a matter of interactional negotiation (Sarangi, 1998). In both Excerpts 2 and 3, we saw the PSM employ the same design of two consecutive questions, first soliciting information and then formulating implications of the response in a second question, thereby granting the information evidential status for the decision they are about to make. Similarly, when POE2 poses the question “that’s going to be about forty?” he presents an upshot formulation of the preceding talk about putting the well on full, making this information visible and reportable, con- sequently lifting to attention what is at stake in the decision. Questions as formula- tions are in this way a powerful device for the production and assessment of evidence.

Questions can be seen as a strategic device in team decision making in this setting as they allow the questioner to set the agenda, make visible specific aspects of the problem or decision, and also require some form of response from the other partici- pants. In this way it can be a powerful rhetorical tool in a complex interprofessional setting in which the participants represent different interests and responsibilities but are expected to work together for an overall goal: in this case the optimization of the well service plan for the purposes of production optimization. When employed at cru- cial stages in the decision-making trajectory, the questions can play a significant role in the negotiations over commitments to future action.

Conclusion

This article has explored how questions function as an interactional resource for deci- sion making in an operational planning meeting in the petroleum industry. The analy- sis was conducted in two steps, with activity type mapping followed by detailed analysis of the functions of questions in decision-making trajectories. Through the example of one decision-making episode in which the participants decided whether to fit in a new task into the plan, questions have been shown to be a forceful interactional resource in this activity type. The questions are characterized by being brief and unelaborated, topically implicit, and fact-oriented, and this specific format is inter- preted as efficient for several reasons. The interprofessional nature of the meeting, with loosely structured phases and fluid participation frameworks, opens up the floor to all the participants. The questions allow managers and engineers to set the agenda and bring in the topics they find relevant or significant to the decision, while at the same time inviting other participants to respond. This might also be seen as functional in an operational planning setting that requires frequent adjustments to the commit- ments made in response to the changes on the offshore installations. While questions can function collaboratively by opening up the conversational space and seeking the expertise of others in a context of complex interdependencies, they are seen here as

Halvorsen 89

also functioning strategically, driving the decision-making trajectory forward and in specific directions. Of particular interest has been questions embedding upshot formu- lations, which play a significant role in the decision-making trajectory as they carry strong communicative force and a drive toward consensus and commitment to future action.

The study contributes to the study of team decision making in the workplace by looking at questions as a multifunctional interactional feature serving diverse func- tions in decision making. In the plan optimization meeting, they are found to open up the floor to a diverse set of participants but also driving decision making by setting the agenda and constraining subsequent interaction. The study further explores profes- sional reasoning in a setting that is rarely studied, namely, planning at an operational level, in which stakes are high and decisions are short-term and frequently changing. Through the activity analytic approach, the study shows the relevance of contextual- izing at the level of the activity type to provide a solid foundation for interpreting discourse features as they derive their functions and meanings within the framework of the situated communicative encounter. Studies of such settings can provide an inter- esting contrast to other forms of workplace meetings and shed light on the diverse resources for decision making in workplace interaction.

Appendix A

List of Transcription Symbols Used

Speakers are identified in the transcripts with three-letter acronyms indicating their organizational role: the first two letters indicating the area of responsibility or depart- ment (e.g., WS for Well Service, PO for Production Optimization) and the third letter indicating level of authority (M for Manager, E for Engineer). Questions are empha- sized in bold font.

[word] : overlapping talk =word : latching to previous utterance without pause (.) : micro pause (3s) : pause in seconds Word : increased emphasis WORD : louder voice (with the exception of abbreviations) °word° : softer voice XX : inaudible word Word- : truncated word or phrase ((word)) : comment to transcription (word) : anonymised information , : rising intonation ? : questioning intonation, also when not obvious on paper . : falling intonation

90 International Journal of Business Communication 55(1)

Appendix B

Examples From Activity Type Mapping

Figure B1. General phase structure across the meeting data.

Figure B2. Phase structure by decision-making episode.

Drilling Engineers

8% Produc�on

Op�mimza�on Engineers

17%

Well Service Engineers

2%

Well Integrity Manager

14% Produc�on Subsurface Manager

6%

Produc�on Op�miza�on

Manager 18%

Well Service Manager

18%

Chair 17%

Figure B3. Distribution of turns by frequency, April meeting.

Halvorsen 91

Author’s Note

This article is original and has not been submitted elsewhere for publication. The author is grate- ful to Srikant Sarangi, Goril Thomassen, and the the reviewers for useful comments on earlier drafts.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was financed by the Center for Integrated Operations in the Petroleum Industry, Trondheim, Norway (www.iocenter.no), project no. 174963 in the Research Council of Norway.

Notes

1. Halvorsen and Sarangi (2015) show how decision adoption in this setting can be accom- plished through the practice of collective silence.

2. The video recording allows the researcher to see the direction of the gaze, but not precisely who the speaker looks at.

3. Based on a study of university discourse, Vásquez (2010) suggests that formulations have a stronger communicative force in public, multiparty talk than in one-on-one participation structures. Explicit formulations compel an interlocutor to go “on record,” and the prefer- ence for agreement might be even stronger in such contexts as noncomfirmatory responses are potentially more unsettling in public rather than private settings. This is, however, a proposition that needs further empirical investigation across institutional contexts.

4. Studies of formulations have frequently emphasized how institutional roles constrain the production and response to formulations (Antaki, Barnes, & Leudar, 2005; Hak & de Boer, 1996), but these have mainly been related to professional–client relationships, where for- mulations have been found to almost exclusively be performed by the professionals.

References

Adelswärd, V. (1989). Laughter and dialogue: The social significance of laughter in institutional discourse. Nordic Journal of Linguistics, 12, 107-136. doi:10.1017/S0332586500002018

Almklov, P. G., & Antonsen, S. (2014). Making work invisible: New public management and operational work in critical infrastructure sectors. Public Administration, 92, 477-492. doi:10.1111/padm.12069

Angouri, J., & Marra, M. (2010). Corporate meetings as genre: A study of the role of the chair in corporate meeting talk. Text & Talk, 30(6), 615-636.

Antaki, C., Barnes, R., & Leudar, I. (2005). Diagnostic formulations in psychotherapy. Discourse Studies, 7, 627-647. doi:10.1177/1461445605055420

Atkinson, P. (1995). Medical talk and medical work. London, England: Sage. Barnes, R. (2007). Formulations and the facilitation of common agreement in meetings talk.

Text & Talk, 27, 273-296. Boden, D. (1994). The business of talk: Organizations in action. Cambridge, England: Polity.

92 International Journal of Business Communication 55(1)

Cicourel, A. V. (1968). The social organization of juvenile justice. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.

Cicourel, A. V. (1990). The integration of distributed knowledge in collaborative medical diag- nosis. In J. Galegher, R. E. Kraut, & C. Egido (Eds.), Intellectual teamwork: Social and technological foundations of cooperative work (pp. 221-242). London, England: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Clifton, J. (2009). Beyond taxonomies of influence “doing” influence and making deci- sions in management team meetings. Journal of Business Communication, 46, 57-79. doi:10.1177/0021943608325749

Cyert, R. M., & March, J. G. (1963). A behavioral theory of the firm (SSRN Scholarly Paper No. ID 1496208). Rochester, NY: Social Science Research Network. Retrieved from http:// papers.ssrn.com/abstract=1496208

Ford, C. E. (2010). Questions in meetings. In A. F. Freed & S. Ehrlich (Eds.), Why do you ask? The function of questions in institutional discourse (pp. 211-234). Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.

Freed, A., & Ehrlich, S. (Eds.). (2010). Why do you ask? The function of questions in institu- tional discourse. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.

Graham, S. L. (2009). Hospitalk: Politeness and hierarchical structures in interdisciplinary dis- charge rounds. Journal of Politeness Research, 5, 11-31.

Hak, T., & de Boer, F. (1996). Formulations in first encounters. Journal of Pragmatics, 25, 83-99. doi:10.1016/0378-2166(94)00076-7

C. Hall, S. Slembrouck, & S. Sarangi (Eds.). (2006). Inter-professional decision-making in a case conference. In Language practices in social work: Categorisation and accountability in child welfare (pp. 53-70). London, England: Routledge.

Halvorsen, K. (2010). Team decision making in the workplace: A systematic review of dis- course analytic studies. Journal of Applied Linguistics and Professional Practice, 7, 273-296.

Halvorsen, K., & Sarangi, S. (2015). Team decision making in workplace meetings: The inter- play of activity roles and discourse roles. Journal of Pragmatics, 76, 1-14.

Heritage, J., & Watson, D. R. (1979). Formulations as conversational objectives. In G. Psathas (Ed.), Everyday language: Studies in ethnomethodology (pp. 123-162). New York, NY: Irvington.

Hjörne, E. (2005). Negotiating the “problem-child” in school. Qualitative Social Work, 4(4), 489-507.

Hodgkinson, G. P., & Starbuck, W. H. (2008). The Oxford handbook of organizational decision making. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.

Holmes, J., & Chiles, T. (2010). “Is that right?” Questions and questioning as control devices in the workplace. In A. F. Freed & S. Ehrlich (Eds.), Why do you ask? The function of ques- tions in institutional discourse (pp. 187-210). Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.

Hughes, D., & Griffiths, L. (1997). “Ruling in” and “ruling out”: Two approaches to the micro- rationing of health care. Social Science & Medicine, 44(5), 589-599.

Huisman, M. (2001). Decision-making in meetings as talk-in-interaction. International Studies of Management & Organization, 31(3), 69-90.

Kwon, W., Clarke, I., & Wodak, R. (2009). Organizational decision-making, discourse, and power: Integrating across contexts and scales. Discourse & Communication, 3, 273-302.

Levinson, S. C. (1979). Activity types and language. Linguistics, 17, 365-399. March, J. G., & Olsen, J. P. (1976). Ambiguity and choice in organizations. Bergen, Norway:

Universitetsforlaget.

Halvorsen 93

Måseide, P. (2006). The deep play of medicine: Discursive and collaborative processing of evi- dence in medical problem solving. Communication & Medicine, 3, 43-54.

Mehan, H. (1983). The role of language and the language of role in institutional decision mak- ing. Language in Society, 12(2), 187-211.

Menz, F. (1999). “Who am I gonna do this with?” Self-organization, ambiguity and decision- making in a business enterprise. Discourse & Society, 10, 101-128.

Mintzberg, H., Raisinghani, D., & Théorêt, A. (1976). The structure of “unstructured” decision processes. Administrative Science Quarterly, 21, 247-275.

Nikander, P. (2003). The absent client: Case description and decision-making in interprofes- sional meetings. In C. Hall, K. Juhila, & T. Pösö (Eds.), Constructing clienthood in social work and human services: Identities, interactions and practices (pp. 112-128). London, England: Jessica Kingsley.

Sanders, R. E. (2007). The effect of interactional competence on group problem solving. In F. Cooren (Ed.), Interacting and organizing: Analysis of a management meeting (pp. 163- 183). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Sarangi, S. (1998). Interprofessional case construction in social work: The evidential status of information and its reportability. Text, 18, 241-270. doi:10.1515/text.1.1998.18.2.241

Sarangi, S. (2000). Activity types, discourse types and interactional hybridity. In S. Sarangi & M. Coulthard (Eds.), Discourse and social life (pp. 1-27). London: Longman.

Sarangi, S. (2010a). Practising discourse analysis in healthcare settings. In I. Bourgeault, R. Dingwall, & R. DeVries (Eds.), The Sage handbook of qualitative methods in health research (pp. 397-416). London, England: Sage.

Sarangi, S. (2010b). The spatial and temporal dimensions of reflective questions in genetic counseling. In A. F. Freed & S. Ehrlich (Eds.), Why do you ask? The function of questions in institutional discourse (pp. 235-255). Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.

Sarangi, S., & Roberts, C. (Eds.). (1999). Talk, work and institutional order: Discourse in medi- cal, mediation and management settings. New York, NY: Mouton de Gruyter.

Silverman, D. (1987). Communication and medical practice: Social relations in the clinic. London, England: Sage.

Simon, H. A. (1957). Administrative behavior (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Free Press. Sinclair, J. M., & Coulthard, M. R. (1975). Towards an analysis of discourse: The English used

by teachers and pupils. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Vásquez, C. (2010). Examining two explicit formulations in university discourse. Text & Talk,

30, 749-771. Wasson, C. (2000). Caution and consensus in American business meetings. Pragmatics, 10,

457-481.

Author Biography

Kristin Halvorsen has recently completed a PhD in applied linguistics with the thesis “Interactional Dynamics of Team Decision Making. A Discourse Analytic Study of Operational Planning Meetings in the Petroleum Industry.” This year, the article “Team Decision-Making in Workplace Meetings: The Interplay of Activity Roles and Discourse Roles,” coauthored with Srikant Sarangi, was published in Journal of Pragmatics (Vol. 76, 2015). Her current research interests include interprofessional and inter-sectorial collaboration in the public sector, primar- ily within the areas of health care and community fire prevention.

Copyright of International Journal of Business Communication is the property of Association for Business Communication and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.