How does Culture and Gender Diversity Impact Communication in Project Teams

Abstract: Globalization leads to a high degree of interdependence and interaction of employees who often need to work in teams composed of members with varying gender, culture, abilities, skills, expertise, knowledge and so on. This dissertation will explore the interrelation between communication and the factors such as gender and culture that impact the communication process. In order to find out how culture and gender diversity influences the communication in a project team, an experiment combined with an interview was conducted. The results indicate that gender diversity appears to lead to negative communication and culture diversity indicates that there might be a positive impact on communication. This research was limited to the literature sources that were taken into consideration and the definitions used to describe the concepts of communication, culture, gender and diversity. Also the experiment was performed with a small sample of students, which could bias the results. A practical contribution of this of this dissertation is the insight of how to communicate across cultural and gender borders. Theoretical contribution of this dissertation is an attempt to open a “black box”.