HRMARS - Team communication has become increasingly important in modern organisations due to the growing reliance on multidisciplinary and interdependent teams within complex project environments. Despite its recognised importance, organisations continue to face challenges related to ineffective information flow, fragmented coordination, misunderstandings, and delayed decision-making, all of which negatively affect team effectiveness and project outcomes. Guided by the Input-Mediator-Output (IMO) framework, this conceptual paper examines the role of team communication as a mediator that transforms team inputs into effective performance outcomes. Through a narrative review of literature across construction, healthcare, engineering, agile software development, and project management contexts, the paper synthesises existing theoretical and empirical insights regarding communication, team processes, and emergent relational conditions. The review highlights that communication contributes not only to task coordination and knowledge integration, but also to the development of trust, psychological safety, shared mental models, and long-term team viability. The findings further suggest that communication quality is more critical than communication quantity, particularly within highly interdependent project environments. In addition, the paper identifies gaps in the current literature, including limited conceptual integration across disciplines and insufficient attention to communication complexity within project-based industries. Practical recommendations are proposed to assist organisations in strengthening communication systems, communication competencies, and collaborative team environments to enhance sustainable team effectiveness.
Yuong et al. (2026) studied this question.