Videoconferencing in Business Meetings: An Affordance Perspective

This article investigates users’ perceptions of videoconferencing (VC) as a mode of communication in business meetings. The study demonstrates that affordance theory is a fruitful theoretical perspective for understanding what shapes users’ perceptions of how well VC works as a communication technology in business meetings. The article is based on observation and qualitative interviews with VC users in a multinational company. The findings suggest that multiple factors affect user perceptions of VC, including technical features, VC room setup, competence, culture, meeting norms, and organizational issues. The affordance perspective adopted in this study may provide practitioners with a theoretically based understanding that can improve their ability to guide VC implementation in organizations. Videoconferencing in Business Meetings: An Affordance Perspective