Questions as Interactional Resource in Team Decision Making

<jats:p> 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. </jats:p>