Communication behaviour during management and design team meetings: a comparison of group interaction

Christopher Gorse and Stephen Emmitt

Construction Management and Economics, 2007, vol. 25, issue 11, 1197-1213

Abstract: Although a few studies have investigated the communication behaviour of construction professionals this research represents the first attempt to model the construction team's interaction in live project meetings. Using the established Bales interaction process analysis (IPA) method, both task and relational interaction were recorded and a model of group communication was produced. A total of 36 meetings were observed from 10 construction projects and the data aggregated to provide a single profile of the groups' interaction. The construction meetings' interaction is compared to previous research undertaken in other contexts. Differences were found between the interaction patterns of work, social and academic groups. Typical of the interaction previously observed in work groups, the participants in construction meetings use high levels of task-based interaction and low levels of socio-emotional interaction. The adversarial environment often associated with construction was not found, indeed the level of negative emotion and critical discussion was so low that it could be suggested that problems may pass unchallenged.

Keywords: Communication; group dynamics; design; management; teams (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01446190701567413 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:conmgt:v:25:y:2007:i:11:p:1197-1213

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RCME20

DOI: 10.1080/01446190701567413

Access Statistics for this article

Construction Management and Economics is currently edited by Will Hughes

More articles in Construction Management and Economics from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().