IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/pal/palchp/978-0-230-61951-7_6.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

The Gray Principle: Update and Connect through Intensive Communication

In: Breaking the Code of Project Management

Author

Listed:
  • Alexander Laufer

    (Technion-Israel Institute of Technology)

Abstract

Chester Barnard, who was a telecommunications executive and author of Functions of the Executive, an influential twentieth-century management book, asserted that “the first function of the executive is to develop and maintain a system of communication.”1 Similarly, Frederick Brooks, best known as the “father of the IBM System/360,” argued that “the project managers chief daily task is communication, not decision-making.”2 On the basis of a review of more than 50 studies of the communication patterns of managers at all levels, Raymond Panko concluded that “managers spend about 85% of their day communicating.”3 In a recent study of ten highly successful on-site construction project managers, who were each systematically observed on the job for one week, it was found that 76 percent of their time, on average, was dedicated to verbal communication alone (meetings, both planned and unplanned, and telephone calls).4

Suggested Citation

  • Alexander Laufer, 2009. "The Gray Principle: Update and Connect through Intensive Communication," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Breaking the Code of Project Management, chapter 0, pages 169-195, Palgrave Macmillan.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:palchp:978-0-230-61951-7_6
    DOI: 10.1057/9780230619517_6
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pal:palchp:978-0-230-61951-7_6. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.palgrave.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.