1.1 Background Cross-functional teams have increasingly become popular as they are associated with enhanced decision making and problem solving capabilities, enhanced capabilities for sustaining an end-user customer focus, improved creativity, knowledge creation and organizational learning (Slepian & Koos, 2002; Wong, 2005). However, studies have identified the factors which mediate the effectiveness of such teams as including cultural differences (Ross, 2006), communication issues and team member social skills (Brandt, England & Ward, 2011). According to Dolphin (2005) internal communication facilitates meaningful exchange between individual employees and work groups from different organizational functional groups, organizational levels and specializations. Parker (2002) maintained that effective communication facilitates successful decision making and improves innovativeness, creativity and problem solving capabilities among teams. The researcher maintained that effective communication is …show more content…
Specifically, the study focuses on team member communication in cross-functional teams by using a generic quantitative approach to discover, explore, explain, and predict the factors that contribute to effective communication. The study establishes the influence of the communication barriers in cross-functional team success in the service industry within the AEC and the possible measures which can be adopted to ensure effective communication in cross-functional teams. Since the AEC community became fully integrated in the year 2015, the study focuses on cross-functional teams in the service industry in Bangkok, which is a key hub of the AEC community. This will help to establish the communication requirement which ensures collaboration with other organizations within the 10 countries that formed the