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Comparing Communication Style within Project Teams of three Project-oriented Organizations in Iran

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If we consider project as a temporary organization, based on the Organizational theory we can also consider it as a human community. In this regard and with attention to major sociologists’ confirmation, communication plays very important role in any human community and with the same importance in projects with multicultural context. In this framework and using descriptive-analytical method, this research tries to analyze and compare communication style in two project teams from any three selected project-oriented organizations in Iran. Thus after some interviews, in order to determine team members’ communication styles a questionnaire was designed and distributed between two project team members that one of them had been known as high performance team and another as a low performance from CEO point of view, based on performance indexes that previously generated by corporates. Then achieved data analyzed by Excel and SPSS. The main result indicates that probably there is a correlation between communication style arrangement of team members and project team performance. Teams that had been formed by all kind of communication style peoples, with suitable arrangement commonly had better performance than other teams that had been formed by same communication style peoples. In another word in first kind of teams, team member complete each other and create better communication network than second one. However this result needs more empirical and theoretical study. It is believed that this study can prepare context for future research in order to improve communication among project teams to obtain high performance.
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Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 226 ( 2016 ) 226 – 235
Available online at www.sciencedirect.com
1877-0428 © 2016 Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of the organizing committee of IPMA WC 2015.
doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2016.06.183
ScienceDirect
29th World Congress International Project Management Association (IPMA) 2015, IPMA WC
2015, 28-30 September 1 October 2015, Westin Playa Bonita, Panama
Comparing communication style within project teams of three
project-oriented organizations in Iran
Mehrdad Sarhadi
*
Tarbiat Modares University, No. 7, Jalal Al Ahmad, Tehran, Iran
Abstract
If we consider project as a temporary organization, based on the Organizational theory we can also consider it as a human
community. In this regard and with attention to major sociologists’ confirmation, communication plays very important role in any
human community and with the same importance in projects with multicultural context. In this framework and using descriptive-
analytical method, this research tries to analyze and compare communication style in two project teams from any three selected
project-oriented organizations in Iran. Thus after some interviews, in order to determine team members’ communication styles a
questionnaire was designed and distributed between two project team members that one of them had been known as high
performance team and another as a low performance from CEO point of view, based on performance indexes that previously
generated by corporates. Then achieved data analyzed by Excel and SPSS. The main result indicates that probably there is a
correlation between communication style arrangement of team members and project team performance. Teams that had been
formed by all kind of communication style peoples, with suitable arrangement commonly had better performance than other
teams that had been formed by same communication style peoples. In another word in first kind of teams, team member complete
each other and create better communication network than second one. However this result needs more empirical and theoretical
study. It is believed that this study can prepare context for future research in order to improve communication among project
teams to obtain high performance.
© 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Peer-review under responsibility of the organizing committee of IPMA WC 2015.
Keywords: project team; communication style; project-based organization; team performance; Iran
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +0-000-000-0000 ; fax: +0-000-000-0000 .
E-mail address: m.sarhadi@modares.ac.ir
© 2016 Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of the organizing committee of IPMA WC 2015.
227
Mehrdad Sarhadi / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 226 ( 2016 ) 226 – 235
1. Introduction
In modern disturbed world, Communication has been considered as a heart of project management (Kerzner,
2009). This reality was emphasized when project had been considered as a temporary organization. It’s because as
majority of sociologists have addressed, communication plays very important role in coordination and integration of
any society such as organizational society. In level of program and portfolio we can see the footmark of
communication as a one of the most important element, for example in level of portfolio, effective communication is
a vital function in order to management of risk, resource and stakeholders (PMI, 2013). Chaster Bernard in his
interesting book, (The Function of the Executive) emphasized that communication is the primary task of any
executive, and communication with employees regarding their concerns, problems, ideas, and suggestions about the
organization is the critical skill of managing. Also he believed that in the exhaustive theory of organization,
communication would occupy a central place, because the structure, extensiveness, and scope of organization are
almost entirely determined by communication techniques (Henderson, 2004). Also John Naisbitt believed that
“future competition will be managerial competition, and the focus of competition among organization will be
effective communication among the member of the organization and with external organizations” (Tai, Wang, &
Anumba, 2008). From another perspective, In new word that organization and team members from different cultural
background work together, partnering has been presented as one of the most suitable approach for dominate the new
practical shortcoming (Floricel, Bonneau, Aubry, & Sergi, 2014), thus communication can plays very important role,
because without effective communication we can't achieve effective partnering (Tam, Shen, Yau, & Tam, 2006; Tai,
Wang, & Anumba, 2008; EL-Saboni, Aouad, & Sabuni, 2005; Adnan, Shamsuddin, Supardi, & Ahmad, 2012).
In next sections we review previous research about important of communication in different area of project
management especially in multicultural condition of Iran society, after that we provide some explain about
communication style model and our approach in this research to this special concept, we also provide research
methodology and some information about selected cases, then using descriptive-analytical approach, we try to
analyze communication style arrangement of two project teams from any three selected project-oriented organization
in Iran, that one of them has been known as high performance and another as a low performance team from CEO
point of view and performance indexes that previously generated by corporates, and in final we discuss about results
and provide some area of research for further studies in the future.
2. Importance of communication in different area of project management
Accomplished researches show that different area of project management is widely affected by the
communication framework. For example in area of human resource management (HRM) Peter Drucker considered
Human Relations and communication to be important parts of a foundation for future development of the basic
principles for managing work and workers (Bredin & Soderlund, 2011). Also in area of Knowledge management,
there is interdependence between shared knowledge within transnational project on the one hand, and
communication and coordination on the other. Research showed in most complex word, failures to create shared
knowledge in the initial phase of transnational project had consequences on the effectiveness of communication and
coordination in transnational project. Also when communication and interaction were not encouraged and required,
coordination for shared knowledge was not developed over time within the project team (Adenfelt, 2009).
communication also plays very important role, but with some difference in virtual teams, when we pay close
attention to virtual project team we confront with two kind of communication problem: inadequate communication
and technological problem hindering communication, the first appears to be a key risk on project of both type
(virtual and non-virtual projects) but the second one does not appear to be a key risk for either type of project. kind
of communication that happen in virtual team often have been seen insufficient, because of its inability to transfer
certain type of implicit knowledge or expertise successfully via electronic communication method or in another word
without face-to-face communication (Reed & Knight, 2009; Adenfelt, 2009). Frequency of communication has a
great influence on trust and interdependence among team member, and we know that improving in these two factors
finally lead to achieve high level performance team in different dimensions, especially in area of knowledge transfer
(Park & Lee, 2013). In area of leadership, the chosen style of communication base on the various factors will differ
from leader to leader and from project to project, but communication with people remains an intrinsic part of
228 Mehrdad Sarhadi / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 226 ( 2016 ) 226 – 235
leadership (Zulch, 2014). Result of another study shows that in order to achieve better environmental performance, it
is vital to collect response from various project participants specially: clients, consultants, contractors, and various
subcontractors to build up collaboration. It is important to pay attention that Effective of this collaboration is largely
based on communication among various parties (Tam, Shen, Yau, & Tam, 2006). Another research indicates the
influence of National Culture (NC) on project management and specially project planning, in compare of Arab and
British NC the important role of communication has been shown in planning stage for poly chronic culture like Arab
country (Caldwell & Pinnington, 2012). The above mentioned researches make it possible for us to clearly tracking
the influence of communication in different area of project management. And it is provable from these researches
that not only communication affects different area of project management but also it is affected by wide spectrum of
variable from cultural to individual, and there are also different kind of intermediate variables, that all lead to
communication analysis be a very difficult kind of analysis. In this research we will focus on individual aspect of
communication analysis.
3. Future multicultural context of Iran and importance of communication
Communication issues in Iran can be very important, especially in area of partnering procurement in different
kind of construction project as an innovative and non-confrontational relationship-based approach to the
procurement (MohammadHasanzadeh, Hosseinalipour, & Hafezi, 2014) Multicultural teams are particularly
susceptible to communications problems that can affect team cohesion (Ochieng & Price, 2010). Therefore
communication analyze is important for human resource management and effective team building in multicultural
context of Iran. Iranian society made up of different religious (Christians, Sunnis, shia and etc.) and ethnics (Kurd,
Arab, Baluch, turkoman, Azari and etc) minorities. and in recent years new kind of work force with different
nationalities immigrate for work and inhabit from neighbourhood country such as Afghanistan, Tajikistan,
Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Iraq and etc. This phenomenon increases cultural diversity of Iran community, especially
in Big cities. It is expected in near future; decrease tension between Iran and western country led to economic
recovery and accelerate immigration from neighbourhood country. Therefore in order to build high performance
team, communicational problem and communicational style diversity of team members would occupy central place
of any future research. In this regard we try to investigate the influence of communication style arrangement of team
members on project team performance.
4. Communication style model
Communication style refers to the whole show of characteristic features of communicative act of a person.
Attitude, communication patterns and temperament are the three fundamental elements that determine the style of
communication (urea & Muscalu, 2012). We can pursue the qualitative and quantitative measures of communication
among project team in personal attribute of members. One dimension of any person is the preferred communication
style. (Reece & Brandt, 2005) there is previous research about the relationship between the communication style and
learning performance that results, confirm relationship, with intermediate role of collaborative social network, but in
that study authors consider communication style as willing to communication (WTC). (Cho, Gay, Davidson, &
Ingraffea, 2005) in this research we try to investigate the relationship between communication style of project team
member and team performance, There are various definition of communication style and various reference presented
different kind of communication style based on the area of study. Some divided it to 5 kind (narrowly biomedical-
expanded biomedical-biopsychosocial-psycho-social-consumerist) (van Dillen, Hiddink, Koelen, Graaf, & van
Woerkum, 2005), and another to 9 kind (Animated -Attentive -Contentious-Dominant-Dramatic-Friendly-
Impression-leaving-Open-communication-Relaxed) (Kang & Hyun, 2011). But in this research we establish our
study base on the B.L.Reece and R.Brandt communication style model (Fig.1). First of all we introduce two
important dimension of human behavior: dominance and sociability. (Reece & Brandt, 2005, pp. 60,61).
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4.1. Dominance continuum
Dominance can be defined as the tendency to display a “take-charge” attitude. Every person falls somewhere on
the dominance continuum. David w. Johnson states that people tend to fall into two dominance categories: low or
high. Low dominance people are characterized by a tendency to be cooperative and eager to assist other. They tend
to be low in assertiveness and are more willing to be controlled by others. High dominance people give advice freely
and frequently initiate demands. They are more assertive and tend to seek control over other.
4.2. Sociability Continuum
People who high in sociability usually express their feeling freely, whereas people lows on the continuum tend to
control their feeling. High sociability person is open and talkative and like personal association. Whereas low
sociability person is more reserved and formal in social relationship.
4.3. Communication style
Using communication style model we can identify most preferred style of project team. Dominance is represented
by the horizontal axis and sociability by the vertical axis. So model divided into 4 zones, each representing one of
four communication style: supportive, reflective, director or emotive (Reece & Brandt, 2005).
Figure 1: communication style model (Reece & Brandt, 2005).
4.3.1 Supportive Style
Upper-left-hand quadrant: low dominance-high sociability. Some Behavior of supportive style person including:
Listens attentively, avoid the use of power, Make and express decisions in a thoughtful, deliberate manner.
High Sociability
Low Sociability
Low Dominance
High Dominance
0 0.5 1.5 2.5 3.5 4.5 5
5 4.5 3.5 1.5 0.5 0
Director
Reflectiv
Supportive
Excess Zone
Zone 1
Zone 2
230 Mehrdad Sarhadi / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 226 ( 2016 ) 226 – 235
4.3.2 Reflective style
Lower-left-hand quadrant: low dominance-low sociability. Some Behavior of reflective style person including:
expresses opinion in a discipline and deliberate manner, seems to be preoccupied, Prefers orderliness.
4.3.3 Director style
Lower-right-hand quadrant: high dominance-low sociability. Some Behavior of director style person including:
projects a serious attitude, expresses strong opinions, may project indifference.
4.3.4 Emotive style
Upper-right-hand quadrant: high dominance-high sociability. Some behavior of emotive style person including:
displays spontaneous, uninhibited behavior, displays the personality dimension described as extroversion, possesses
natural persuasiveness.
4.4. Communication style intensity
Communication styles intensity is also different; therefore we can divide the model base on intensity zone:
people in zone 1 commonly display their behavioral characteristics with less intensity than people in zone 2. In
another word it is more difficult to identify preferred communication style of people in zone 1. But people in zone 2
commonly display their behavioral characteristic with greater intensity than those in zone 1. People in Excess zone
commonly display their behavioral characteristics with high degree of intensity and rigidity. When people occupy
this zone, they become inflexible and display lack of versatility. This compartmentation should not be considered as
a permanent barrier. Under certain condition, people will abandon their preferred style temporarily (Reece & Brandt,
2005).
5. Research methodology
In order to enhance our understanding about how team members’ communication style can influence the overall
performance of project a case-study approach is adopted to examine communication style model in project team
from 3 project-oriented organizations in Iran. organizations selected process happened base on the 2 criteria: 1-
selected organization should be great organization with various project team that provide for us a suitable power of
choice that finally lead to high degree of comparability. 2-selected organization should be kind of organization that
their data be accessible at least for two teams that we'll select. Case study research provides it possible for us to use
several data collection means. In this regard, first we collected data about the different performance dimension of
any project using a semi-structured-interview and reviewing project and corporate documents, then we used
questionnaire in order to get data from team members. Thus questionnaire was designed base on the communication
style model that has been discussed. It included two main sections: first section contain dominance indicators and
second sociability indicators of human behavior dimensions (Table 1). And any section not only asked question
about their respondents but also asked them to respond the same question about Teammates. Thus it provided it
possible for us to judge about communication style model of any person using average of data that collected from
him/her and some other team members. And last collected data had been analyzed by Excel and SPSS as follow:
Part1: in first step we determined the mean of collected indexes score of dominance and sociability dimensions
for any member of project teams by Excel, and based on this two dimensions we determined communication style of
any person. In this regard we considered zone 2 and excess zone as the acceptable area in communication style
model and zone 1 was considered indistinctive. That’s because identify preferred communication style of people in
zone 1 as discuss above is blur (fig.1). in second step we tried to discuss about arrangement of communication style
in any teams and interpreted its relationship with performance.
Part2: also study the factors that have influence on communication style of persons would be very important for
project manager in order to build coherent team; therefore we tried to investigate the relationship between age of
team members and two dimension of communication style model (Dominance and sociability) by SPSS and using
spearman correlation coefficient as a non-parametric test.
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Table 1: Human behaviour dimensions (Reece & Brandt, 2005)
Sociability indicators
Dominance indicators
Easygoing
Disciplined
Competitive
Cooperative
Expressive
Controlled
Authoritative
Submissive
Lighthearted
Serious
Domineering
Accommodating
Unstructured
Methodical
Decisive
Hesitant
Spontaneous
Calculating
Outgoing
Reserved
Open
Guarded
Insistent
Compromising
Extroverted
Introverted
Risk taking
Cautious
Friendly
Aloof
Hurried
Patient
Casual
Formal
Influential
Passive
Provocative
Reserved
Talkative
Quiet
Carefree
Cautious
Bold
Shy
Unconventional
Conforming
Demanding
Supportive
Dramatic
Self-controlled
Intense
Relaxed
Impulsive
Restrained
Assertive
Restrained
6. Projects Specification
As shown in Table 2 all projects are approximately similar to each other especially in term of delivery system and
client. From methodological point of view it brought with itself some weaknesses and advantages. It decreased our
study generalizability and limited its results But at the same time, one of the most important advantages that it added
to our research, is that helped us to eliminate mediator variable that could affect our final results, thus led to enhance
the reliability of the research. However certain dissimilitude exist yet, that should be considered. Another important
issue that should be mentioned is that every company has his own performance evaluation procedure but fortunately
it can’t hurt our research results because both high and low performance project of any company were evaluated by
performance evaluation procedure that included key performance indexes as evaluation criteria, however any
company contemplated different importance for any criteria.
Table 2: Selected project information, H: High performance, L: Low performance
Attributes
Company A
Company B
Company C
H-Project
L-Project
H-Project
L-Project
H-Project
L-Project
Building Type
Thermal power plant
Hydro power plant
oil refinery
Combined cycle power plant
Dam project
Dam project
Delivery System
EPC
EPC
EPC
EPC
EPC
EPC
Schedule Duration
5 years
6.5years
2.8 years
4 years
4.8 years
7 years
Client
Public-private
public
public
private
public
public
7. Discussion
After determining communication style of all team members, we determine the communication style arrangement
of any team as shown in table 3 and fig.2. Communication style arrangements of two from three high performance
teams (P-1, P-5) have a similarity to each other. Bothe teams communication arrangement include all
communication style (Supportive, Emotive, Reflective, Director) and with approximately equal proportion. In versus
all three low performance teams (P-2, P-4, P-6) have a unequal proportion of any communication style and in order,
P-4 and P-6 have not “reflective” and “director” communication style persons.
232 Mehrdad Sarhadi / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 226 ( 2016 ) 226 – 235
Fig. 2 Communication style of team members
Table 3: performance and communication style of each project, H: High performance, L: Low performance
Company
Number of project
Number of team member
performance
Cost
Time
Quality
safety
Environmental
Total
A
P-1
10
L
H
L
H
H
H
P-2
9
L
L
H
L
H
L
B
P-3
14
H
H
H
L
H
H
P-4
11
L
L
L
H
L
L
C
P-5
10
H
H
H
L
L
H
P-6
8
H
L
L
L
H
L
Company
Communication style
Supportive
Emotive
Reflective
Director
Indistinctive
Percent
Number
of Person
Percent
Number
of Person
Percent
Number
of Person
Percent
Number
of Person
Percent
Number
of Person
A
20%
2
20%
2
30%
3
20%
2
10%
1
11.11%
1
11.11%
1
22.22%
2
55.55%
5
0%
0
B
7.14%
1
49.98%
7
28.57%
4
0%
0
14.28%
2
27.27%
3
18.18%
2
0%
0
36.36%
4
18.18%
2
C
30%
3
20%
2
30%
3
20%
2
0%
0
25%
2
62.5%
5
12.5%
1
0%
0
0%
0
Also we can see similar situation in P-3 as a high performance project. Therefore we can state probably there is
dependence between communication style arrangement of project team members and total performance of project.
Teams that contain all communication style and with approximately equal proportion show better performance than
other teams. We also tried to investigate more about the P-3 as an incompatible case with research results, as shown
in table 3 this team has most number of members among other selected teams (14 members). Therefore achieving
high degree of coordination and integration in this special team typically should be difficult but our interviews with
team members and corporate authorities show that this team has very popular and skilled leader, it seems that
coordination in this special team mainly is created and improved by its leader that finally lead to achieve high
performance. However more reliable result about this special team needs more research because there are probably
other important factors that should be considered such as previous familiarity of team members with each other
because of their previous experience of working together that help them to reach a suitable coordination.
It seems from achieved results that, different communication style complete each other. Thus existence of peoples
with different communication styles within project team probably help them to communicate with each other
effectively; intention of effective communication is, participants' ability for achieve a stable optimized agreement in
shortest possible time in their communication actions. In this situation as Jurgen Habermas has emphasized in his
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Mehrdad Sarhadi / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 226 ( 2016 ) 226 – 235
interesting book: communication action theory (1981) participants try to reach an agreement instead overcome each
other. Thus communication in such condition has coordination role in most effective way among team members. In
another word in new approach to project team, centralized power has been replaced with communication. It is
important because traditionally, centralized power had coordinator role in project teams by establishing a
communication bottleneck but in new approach communication flows freely between all project team members.
However it is not possible and reasonable to eliminate power from relationship between participants but it is possible
in complex project with multicultural context in order to achieve high performance team, communication context So
be prepared that lead to balanced distribution of power among team members base on their communication styles,
Which ultimately lead to effective participation of the team members (Badir, Buchel, & Tucci, 2012).Therefore
project manager alongside attention to expertise and capabilities of team members should consider team members’
behavioral aspects especially team members’ communication styles. It could widely affect project team performance,
because effective communication enhances interdependence and trust between members (Park & Lee, 2013) and
motivates them in suitable way.
Also study the factors that have influence on two dimension of communication style model would be very
important for project manager in order to build a coherent team, in this research with attention to interview with
team members and review research literature, from different possible factors that probably effect on communication
style of team members we study the relationship between age and two dimension of communication style
(Dominance and sociability). We hypothesized the correlation between age and two dimensions of communication
style as two separated hypothesis, in this regard the results of testing achieved data show that there is a negative
correlation between age and dominance behavior of team members with -0.548 correlation coefficient and 0.00
significance level. But we can’t find any meaning correlation between age and sociability dimension of person so the
second hypothesize failed. This result can provide this ability for us to achieve better team arrangement (Table 4).
Table 4: correlation coefficient between age and Dominance_Mean_Index and Sociability_Mean_Index
**. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).
Age
Spearman's rho
Dominance_Mean_Index
Correlation Coefficient
-.548**
Sig. (2-tailed)
.000
N
62
Sociability_Mean_Index
Correlation Coefficient
.028
Sig. (2-tailed)
.830
N
62
8. Conclusion
Evidences from previous researches have provided the importance of Communication in different area of project
management such as: human resource management (HRM), knowledge management, virtual team coordination, trust
building between team member, leadership, stakeholders management, and very important role that communication
style as a one of the most important factor of national culture (NC) plays in all function of project management
specially planning. also previous research emphasized on communication in order to achieve effective partnering
(Pryke, 2012, pp. 39,43). Partnering as a one of the most growing approach in construction project in Iran over the
last decade is tacking all attention to itself and procurement partnering extended to all kind of construction project
(MohammadHasanzadeh, Hosseinalipour, & Hafezi, 2014). Therefore this research builds on the previous research
as first attempt in project management to investigate the relation between communication style arrangement of
project team members and team performance. In order to achieve in-depth understanding, we adopted case study
approach with descriptive-analytical method for this research; in this regard we selected two project teams from
three project-oriented organizations in Iran that first has been known as high performance and second as low
234 Mehrdad Sarhadi / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 226 ( 2016 ) 226 – 235
performance from the CEO point of view based on the previous provided indexes by the organization. Then we tried
to determine communication style of each members of team by use of questionnaire that asks respondents to
response not only about him but also about other team members. In final we determine and analyzed communication
style arrangement of any team.
Achieved results show that two teams from three high performance teams have all communication style persons
with approximately equal proportion and all three low performance teams have completely unequal proportion of
any communication style. Therefore we can state probably there is dependence between communication style
arrangement of project team members and total performance of project, in another word teams that contain all
communication style and with approximately equal proportion show better performance than other teams. However
this research can’t positively assert this dependence because it is impossible for us to eliminate other effective
factors on performance, and we also didn’t statistically test this relationship but it can provide suitable signing for
probability existence of this dependence. this study in order to provide practical mechanism for project manager to
build coherent team also show the negative correlation between age and dominance dimension of team members,
from team member point of view older team members show lower dominance behavior than younger, it probably
drives from their experiences.
9. Further research
We think this subject requires more empirical studies in order to make a comprehensive analysis. First step would
be eliminating other effective factors on performance. However it would be difficult to provide exact definition of
word performance but definitely, any definition should consider different dimensions of performance such as time,
cost, quality, safety environment and etc. We also propose, the results of this research be tested with other
communication style models, however different communication style models are similar to each other but such tests
can provide more reliable results. Also it would be interesting subject for future research to investigate the role of
various factors, such as organization position, project situation, and time passage on change pattern of
communicational Style, especially for those peoples who are located outside the zone 2. Also investigate about the
change of communication arrangement pattern in high and low performance project teams in time passage would be
very important issue for future research in order to know about the formation process of effective communication
patterns.
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... Communication styles refer to the tendency of individuals to communicate using specific patterns or rules [11]. Communication styles are all the characteristics of individual communicative action [10]. Communication styles can be used in daily life activities, such as teaching and learning [17], buying and selling [18], and information sharing. ...
... Communication style has not been discussed among the various factors that have been studied previously. Communication style is determined based on overall character of an individual communicative act [10]. Communication style is also an individual tendency to communicate using specific patterns and rules [11]. ...
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Product-review videos can be a promising marketing method. The popularity of using videos as a medium for product reviews is evidenced by the number of channels that are used to provide product reviews on multiple platforms. Reviewers can use various strategies to attract wider audiences and make these audiences loyal to their channels. This study analyzes the effect of the reviewer's communication style on the audience's loyalty to the channels that provide product reviews, especially on the YouTube platform. Communication-style analysis is associated with hedonic and utilitarian motivation theory, which can be used to explain communication style effect on channel loyalty. This study uses a quantitative approach using questionnaire to obtain data. The data in this study are analyzed using covariance-based structural equation modeling in AMOS 21.0. The results show that communication styles (social-oriented and task-oriented), perceived transparency, perceived enjoyment, credibility, and channel engagement affect channel loyalty. Meanwhile, the informativeness factor does not affect channel loyalty. This paper will also discuss the theoretical and practical implications of the study.
... İşletmenin önceki performans endeksleri dikkate alınarak düşük ve yüksek performanslı iki proje takımının iletişim özelliklerinin karşılaştırmasına yönelik gerçekleştirilen bir araştırmada aynı iletişim tarzına sahip bireylerden oluşan takımın performansının, bir birilerinden farklı iletişim tarzlarına sahip bireylerden oluşan takımın performansından daha yüksek olduğu görülmüştür (Sarhadi, 2016). Bu sonuçlar da takımlardaki iletişim biçimlerinin takımların etkinlik ve verimliliğine etki eden faktörlerden birisi olduğunu doğrular niteliktedir. ...
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Bu kitapta öncelikle liderlik kavramı üzerinde durularak liderliğin önemi vurgulanmış, klasik ve çağdaş anlamda liderlik yaklaşımlarına kısaca değinilmiştir. Sonrasında ise takım kavramı, etkili takımların sahip olması gereken özellikler, takımlara neden ihtiyaç duyulduğu ve takımın başarısında etkili olan faktörlere değinildikten sonra takım liderliği kavramı ele alınmıştır. Bu çerçevede takım liderliği için en etkili liderlik tarzı olarak fonksiyonel liderlik yaklaşımı önerilmiştir. Fonksiyonel liderlik yaklaşımı ile başarılı takımların ortaya çıkmasında etkili olan durumsal koşullar ve süreçler açıklanarak bir model ortaya konulmuştur.
... For the determination of the success or failure of a project to be feasible, there must be good communication in the team. When the members communicate frequently, trust and consequently the relationship between them are strengthened, which means an increase in their performance (Júnior & Chaves, 2014;Sarhadi, 2016). ...
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Communication is crucial. Several authors emphasize the role of the project managers’ communication with teams, and the importance of the project management teams’ on the success of projects. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the influence of the communication styles of the project managers’ on the teams’ motivation and con-sequently on the success of projects. Therefore, the literature was reviewed and exploratory research was developed using a qualitative methodology (content analysis of eight semi-structured interviews). A conceptual framework was developed. The results suggest that communication style and leadership are related and impact teams` motivation and consequently on projects’ success.
... • Designing an appropriate communication strategy based on the communication styles of project stakeholders (Sarhadi, 2016) is a critical step to experiencing a meaningful project. ...
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Ethical aspects of stakeholder behavior can have a wide range of implications for other areas of project management. This research critically reviewed project ethics under the philosophical paradigm change from modernism to late modernism, which led to a flexible and realizable ethical framework based on Levinasian and Nietzschean moral psychologies. A qualitative approach was adopted through a multiple-case study to confront the theoretical framework with the empirical world, evaluate its authenticity, and obtain a better understanding of its challenges. Research results showed that stakeholders’ unconscious desire for existential meaning can provide considerable potential for dealing with ethical challenges.
... Previous studies indicated that participation and communication in human relationships are extensively related to each other (Dalcher, 2016;El-Saboni et al., 2009;Sarhadi et al., 2018;Tai et al., 2009;Turkulainen et al., 2015). Based on Habermas's (1984) communicative action theory (Sarhadi, 2016), the power-oriented relationship can be considered a reverse form of consensus-based communication in human relationships. The current research provides empirical evidence on the power-oriented relationship within stakeholder theory and explores the interaction of this agent-based behavior with its structural reasons under the new theoretical perspective. ...
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The feasibility process of public construction projects is under the influence of stakeholders, who give direction to public resource allocation. Therefore, the analysis of stakeholders in this process is critical. An inductive qualitative approach was adopted using the grounded theory method to provide a theoretical explanation of stakeholders’ behaviors. Under the insight of structuration theory, the results indicated that the challenges are derived from various interrelated factors, leading to the emergence of improper participation as a macro-structural phenomenon with multilateral interaction with a power-oriented relationship as a micro behavior in the feasibility process at the agency level.
... Most important identified challenges of R&D project in literature can be summarized as follows: -Not considering creativity and innovation as a significant part of the driving force of research and development project management [8,16] -Presenting the general models without considering the unique nature [13] and features of research and development projects and changing the complexity level of these projects over the project life cycle [17] -Focusing on the development of new products and disregarding the other issues such as human resources management [13] -Having no communications and appropriate recognition of organization on experts and researchers in the field of research and development [18,19] -Having ambiguity in the real value of the projects which are implemented [20] ISSN: 2233-7857 IJFGCN Copyright ⓒ 2020 SERSC -Understanding the required efforts for the management of technology complexities and multidisciplinary subjects in research and development projects [21] -Not selecting an appropriate investment project form research and development projects [22,23] -Having no appropriate resource allocation such as human resources, equipment, research spaces, and budget to the projects under implementation [3] -Paying insufficient attention to fundamental studies due to high risks and low profit margin by companies [24] -Losing the knowledge obtained from research and development projects (especially implicit knowledge) due to the short term nature of these projects and inappropriate conventional mechanisms [12,25,26] -Paying no appropriate attention to quality management in the process of research and development projects [27] -Having the stress between temporary organization and permanent organization due to the lack of power balance [21] -Emphasizing the quantitative methods and ignoring the qualitative aspects and complicated human aspects of the selection process of research and development projects [22,28] -One of the serious challenges in research and development projects is the stress between research and development projects manager and the active scientists in this field. In other words, creative and innovative freedom of scientists is placed in the limitations of time, cost, Etc. ...
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... Therefore, the most promising option for a digital transformation and equipping of the management decision-making process with tools is middle management. Likewise, it should be noted that how promising this transformation is grows exponentially for project work teams [32]. The universal objective is to create a temporary work team to carry out project activities that have a predictable and conditionally predictable result and a recognizable, limited duration. ...
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This paper examines a new approach to defining the task of personnel management in the digital age, taking into account the fundamental changes in internal communications stemming from an increasing use of digital platforms such as intranet, blogs, bulletin boards, instant messaging, and social networking sites. Personnel social media presence plays internal communication roles and thus relates to technologies of social profile analysis regarding employee interaction within the digital economy. The research aims at examining the task of personnel management based on data deriving from social media, for instance social networking sites and other social media tools, with the development of a relevant model for personnel management assessment. It could be shown that communication becomes one of the important aspects of personnel management, which consists of, i.e., human resources planning, recruitment, onboarding, assessment of individual work effects, as well as staff training, rewarding and motivating employees. Effective communication is a prerequisite for carrying out the above-mentioned tasks and performing work effectively. This means that the digital management of personnel can be viewed as a complex task, assuming that organizations operate less by using any formal connections and more by instilling in employees such feelings as feeling inspired, technologically advanced, and proud (on the basis of social media analytics). This paper presents theoretical foundations for developing a model for personnel management with consideration of the distinct employee features based on social media data and included in the assessment process. This allows the same approaches to be used for future research and modeling for assessing team effectiveness. In this paper, a methodological and instrumental solution to the current problem of creating the most effective work team in a digital ecosystem is proposed. The tools proposed to make it possible to create the most potentially effective work team based on the automated processing of natural information contained online on social profiles of potential members of the work team. At the same time, the level of communication compatibility acts as the criterion for the potential effectiveness of the work team. This is an innovative solution for the existing method of managing personnel.
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In many companies today, people spend most of their time working in various types of projects. This book addresses the important question of what this means for the management of human resources at the operational level in the firm. The authors address questions such as: How do first-line managers handle their HR responsibilities when people work in co-located project teams most of the time? What role do project managers have in performing HRM activities? What strategies do individual project workers use to manage their own development while moving from project to project? And, what role do HR specialists have in adding value to the HRM system where operative HRM is really performed? This book summarizes empirical research in a number of industries and firms, most notably in engineering and development contexts. The authors introduce a framework for HRM – the HR quadriad – that expands traditional views on the important relationships that are at the core for HRM activities at the operational level. The framework builds on the idea that HRM is carried out in interplay among four actors in the organization, namely line managers, project managers, individual workers and HR specialists. Accordingly, it seeks to identify the major challenges for each one of these players and illustrates the value of the framework to explain how some of the world's leading companies have responded to these challenges.
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Chapter
This final chapter starts with a proposition: the execution of a construction project is an information-dependent, frequently prototype production process, where conception, design and production phases are compressed, concurrent or at the very least highly interdependent, in an environment where there exists an unusually large number of internal and external uncertainties. This is therefore an organisational context where comprehension, analysis and management of organisational systems are difficult. As might be expected, the chapter reflects upon the key findings of the book and proposes a radical rethink on the way that we conceptualise, represent and manage our construction projects. It is also proposed that the traditional view that fragmentation must be ‘bad’ needs to be reviewed: network analysts are more interested in the ability of weak ties to link to prominent actors than in the size of the actor firms making the link to central network actors.
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Our article answers the call for renewing the theoretical bases of project management in order to overcome the problems that stem from the application of methods based on decision-rationality norms, which bracket the complexity of action and interactions in projects. By grounding our reflection in the practice perspective and by adopting Nicolini's (2013) toolkit approach, we suggest ways that could help practitioners and theorists make better sense of aspects that are highly relevant for project management but are usually overlooked. The paper discusses Nicolini's five dimensions of practice and three social theories (activity theory, actor–network theory and structuration theory) to highlight the combinations that are most appropriate and fruitful for addressing various theoretical and practical issues requiring the attention of project management researchers.
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New product development (NPD) in an alliance context crosses organizational boundaries and therefore makes team and leader empowerment and communication an ever more important topic for the successful accomplishment of NPD goals. We developed a conceptual model that addresses some key questions: Under what circumstances should the project team and leader be empowered? How much empowerment? And what effects does this have on communication and NPD performance?Using case study research, we developed a conceptual model portraying the impact of NPD project team and leader empowerment in the ‘alliance focal company’ (AFC — the lead company in the alliance) on the communication with a project's strategic partners, and the subsequent effects on project performance. Our model suggests that the efficiency of the development project (shortest, cheapest, and highest quality possible) is contingent upon how well the actual intensity level and the degree of media-richness of communication fit the required ones. Conversely, the actual intensity level and degree of media-richness of communication are enabled by a varying extent of team and leader empowerment, ranging from limited to significant.
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The goals of this study were (1) to identify the optimal facets of communication style for customer-oriented service employees and (2) to examine the ways in which the customer-oriented service employee (COSE) induces luxury restaurant patrons’ dedicational behaviors. Customer dedicational behaviors are defined as ‘a set of active and positive customer voluntary behaviors towards a business induced by high relationship quality’. Based on the existing body of communication literature, nine types of communication styles were derived. Theoretical relationships between the nine communication styles and the COSE also were developed via literature review, and causal relationships between the COSE and three different types of consumer dedicational behavior styles were subsequently suggested. By integrating the derived theoretical hypotheses, a conceptual model was proposed and then tested utilizing data collected from 527 luxury restaurant patrons. The results of data analysis revealed that five types of communication styles (attentive, friendly, impression leaving, open, and relaxed) bear a positive impact on COSE, while one communication style (contentious) bears a negative impact. It was also found that the customer-oriented service employee plays a critical role in inducing three types of dedicational behaviors in consumers: enhancement, cooperation, and advocacy. The key theoretical and managerial implications of these findings are discussed in the latter part of this article.