Effects of Brokerage Roles and Communication Direction on Communication Efficiency: A Case Study from a Chinese Construction Project

Organizational communication has been recognized as an essential factor in successful project management. However, scant attention is given to the structural aspects of communication such as the brokerage position (i.e., a position who bridges two or more disconnected individuals or groups) in the networks of construction projects. This paper aims to investigate the impacts of project participants’ different types of brokerage roles (i.e., coordinator, gatekeeper, representative, consultant, and liaison) and communication direction (external-oriented vs. internal-oriented) on their communication efficiency in construction projects. The hypothesized relationships are empirically tested based on the data collected from a large-scale construction project in China. Social network analysis is conducted to understand the relations between project stakeholders from different organizations as well as the features of communication networks in construction projects. The results of regression analyses demonstrate that a certain brokerage role—a consultant—is more likely to have higher communication efficiency while a gatekeeper and a representative tend to have lower efficiency. There is no statistical evidence that communication direction is significantly associated with communication efficiency. A deeper understanding of the effects of brokerage roles on communication efficiency provides valuable insights for developing practical strategies to improve organizational communication.