Interweaving trust and communication with project performance

Project performance is always one of the key concerns of construction project managers. It is often regarded as the critical indicator to measure the success of construction organization. This paper further advances existing knowledge on the achievement of project performance by investigating its relationship with trust and communication. Specifically, the mediating role of communication is studied to detect any direct and/or indirect effect of communication on this relationship. An analytical approach of mediation analysis was performed to achieve this objective. Five significant mediation models were identified. These models demonstrate that trust affects communication and in so doing influences project performance. Specifically, effective information flow is the versatile mediator to the trust-project performance relationships among all of these significant models. This implies that the improvement of information flow would likely improve project performance (i.e., achieve satisfactory and worthwhile quality, maximize project time, cost, and quality). In this context, the findings point to the need for managers to direct efforts or resources to effectively manage information flow as part of the project management system. This paper contributes to research in communication in construction with respect to articulating its mediator role in the trust-performance relationship. The linking of communication with trust and performance extends the study of communication beyond the conventional premises of pattern and means. © 2013 American Society of Civil Engineers.