Abstract

The study titled ‘’The Effect of Communication on project Success in George And Jerry Co Ltd Buea’’ argues on the impact that communication has on projects in George and Jerry Co Ltd Buea. It looks at how communication has helped or harmed projects in George and Jerry Co Ltd Buea. In George and Jerry communication is a common practice where by information is shared among stakeholders, whether direct or indirect stakeholders.

George and Jerry make use of communication mediums such as e-mails, phone calls, social media. Also, they organize meetings with direct stakeholders and/or indirect stakeholders which communication is encouraged. During communication among the stakeholders’ verbal communication and non-verbal communication was done, and those new to their system had to adapt to the system of communication. Also, communication had a formal flow which had to be followed especially when it comes to project reporting. All these left tremendous impact and changes in George and Jerry Co Ltd Buea.

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background to the Study

Communication is the process by which information is exchanged between individuals through a common system of symbols, signs and behavior. The word communication is derived from a Latin word “communis”, which means “common sense”. In other words, communication can be defined as the transmission and interaction of facts, ideas, opinions, feelings. The basic functions of management such as planning, coordination, evaluation, cannot be done effectively without effective communication (Fatimayin, 2018). The various types of communication include verbal, non-verbal, visual, written communication.

Verbal communication involves the use of word(s) to share information with other people. In other words, verbal communication can be defined as the communication that includes the exchange of information through spoken words or sign languages. It is sub divided into formal verbal communication (which involves a pre-defined channel for sharing information) and informal verbal communication (does not involve a pre-defined way of sharing information, can be sent using a means).

Verbal communication is important in that it helps build a positive image of the organization, flow of thoughts and ideas, creates an environment, safes time, ensures job satisfaction (Kaplan & Skowronski, 2023). Non-verbal communication means conveying information without using words. This might involve using certain facial expressions or hand gestures to make a specific point or the use of eye contact and other non-verbal methods to get the message across. The types of non-verbal communication include facial expressions, gestures, body language, eye gaze. Non-verbal communication acts as in strengthening relationships, helps as a substitute for spoken words, helps in regulating conversations (Cherry & MSEd, 2023). Visual communication is a means of sharing information by using visual mediums such as graphs, charts, diagrams, texts, illustrations, drawings, colors, animations (David White, 2021).

The significance of visual communication is that it helps to provide better understanding to the audience and retain information. However, written communication is the exchange of information, ideas or messages through written languages. It can be in the form of letters, images, notes. It is important as it provides permanent record of information. In business, written documents serve as legal binding agreements (Usmani, 2022).

Most companies or organizations of today face challenges in relation to communication practices. However, with the challenges they face, they struggle to come up with solutions to curb it. These challenges faced by most companies or organizations include time zone, which explains the fact that the coming of remote work has brought about problems such as, remote project team members not meeting up with deadlines or causing serious delays of deadline, which have a negative impact on the business and projects.

Also, we have language barriers and cultural differences of which can lead to serious miscommunication and conflict as well as reluctance to collaborate because of interpersonal conflict, which have a negative impact on the organization and project. In addition, finding the right communication tools and technology is challenging.  A tool such as email is good but is faced with challenges that are costly to resolve such as loss of important information among unimportant information and delayed response times.

Also, poor communication skill is a big challenge in organization as having employees with poor communication skills may hold the company back, which negatively impact organization and project. To add, limited feedback is a challenge to communication in relation to negative feedbacks on project or business progress, information relating to bad news may be hidden from the upper management or superiors.

All these criteria impact organization and project negatively (Jovanovic, 2022). However, solving these challenges can be costly and requires proper control by organization(s). Most organizations recommend that there exist a weekly or daily online team calendar in which employees can update their task status at the end of a period for beyond-the-border colleagues to know the exact status of project(s) and where they should pick up from, fostering cross-cultural communication through intercultural training, making use of tools such as Brosix to be time-effective, it has wealth of features like file transfers, screen sharing, voice and video chat, and more (Martic, 2023).

Project success is a state in which actual project work meets the requirements set for the project. Companies and organizations can reap many benefits from completing a project successfully. These benefits include improving collaboration as employees who collaborate to work on a project, mastered each other’s strengths and weaknesses, and have attained success will hope for future projects to come in other to better perform. Also, it utilizes resources productively as successful project often mean there’s less waste. Also, it portrays the company or organization positively that’s, record of completing projects successfully establishes a positive reputation for the organization and as well lead to employee retention, as employees might feel fulfilled and decide to stay at the organization

In recent years many companies have suffered from project failure. This may be due to the fact that they do not carry out the criteria for a successful project, about 75% of projects fail. This failure may be due to insufficient resources to execute task, little stakeholder engagement to the project, poor communication, poor planning, scope creep, lack of expertise and unskillful project manager (MacNeil, 2022). For example, a building construction project in Buea, UB South, went operational and closed without the building reaching its completion.

From the researcher’s investigation, the project failed because of insufficient resources to carryout work, poor communication, and poor planning of the project. However, several factors ensure that projects are successful. They include proper planning, effective monitoring and control, use of professional softwares, effective communication, working with committed people (stakeholder engagement), effective risk management, strong closure of project, skillful project manager (Lovsin, 2021). The above criteria ensure the success of every project.

Statement of Problem

In recent years, communication on project success have had many effects. These effects are grouped into two main categories that is, the positive effects and negative effects. Positive effects such as built employee morale and trust, satisfaction and engagement, helps to lessen the chances for misunderstandings and potentially reduces grievances and lawsuits, helps in identifying risks in project, its improved processes and procedures and ultimately creates greater efficiency and reduces costs.

On the other hand, negative effects such as increased misunderstanding, break trust and increased anger and hostility. However, the main aim of this research is to study the effects of communication on project success. Communication on project success has become a subject of great concern to companies and organizations as project success meets customer satisfaction, customer retention, attract more investors and more profits. Despite the presence of communication in organizations, they still face challenges in achieving or attaining project success.

It is due to project failures that the researcher sees it important to carry out research on; “The Effect of Communication on Project Success”: using George and Jerry Co Ltd, in the Buea municipality, as the case study. These challenges faced have caused the researcher to find out if the implementation of communication in George and Jerry Co Ltd Buea will ensure its projects meets success continuously.

1.3 Research Questions

1.3.1 General research question

To what extent does communication affect project success in George and Jerry Co Ltd Buea?

1.3.2 Specific research questions.

1. What is the effect of verbal communication on project success?
2. What is the effect of non-verbal communication on project success?

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