Beyond the agenda: meetings as foundational to team entitativity, innovation, and effectiveness in scientific contexts

Abstract

Effective scientific collaboration is essential for addressing society’s most dynamic and interconnected problems, yet the interpersonal and structural processes that foster such collaboration are often undermined by fragmentation and knowledge heterogeneity. While the science of team science has identified the structural barriers to collaboration, less attention has been paid to the primary mechanism where these barriers are negotiated: the team meeting. Although frequently dismissed as an administrative tax on productivity, we argue that the meeting must be re-conceptualized as the essential structuring episode where a collection of experts transforms into a coherent entity. Drawing on structuration theory and the concept of entitativity–the perception of a social unit as a unified group–we propose a conceptual model positioning the meeting as the central arena for identity construction and knowledge integration. We then translate the model into actionable guidance for science meetings. Furthermore, we challenge the view of team development as an episodic activity, arguing instead that meetings function as continuous, embedded Team Development Interventions (TDIs). By enforcing a temporal rhythm of interaction, well-designed meetings serve as the critical counter-measure to team decay, preventing the erosion of shared mental models and trust that occurs when members retreat to disciplinary silos. We integrate insights from meeting science, team dynamics, and knowledge integration research to translate this theory into practical strategies. We conclude by offering future research directions to empirically study the mechanisms that can ultimately demonstrate how strategic meeting design can unlock the full integrative capacity of scientific teams.