ABSTRACT
Research into group communication has shown that social interaction is essential for building and maintaining relationships and that task-based interaction is necessary to accomplish the group goal (Keyton 1999). Key to project success is the interaction practices that help to establish and then maintain the inter-organisational relationships necessary to accomplish the construction team’s goals. The nature of the relationship established through communication will affect the actor’s congruent understanding and hence the actor’s ability to use information to aid decision-making (Gorse and Emmitt 1998a). The relational qualities necessary to deliver a functional building can only be achieved through effective social and task-oriented communication. Improvements in the construction process will only be achieved if we start to understand how we use communication to build and maintain the relationships necessary to undertake multidisciplinary tasks. The success of construction projects seems to be highly dependent on relational and task-based communication. In a construction context these two elements of communication are interdependent. Communication and the social context in which it occurs are interwoven and research must consider both factors (Gudykunst 1986).
