Communication Barriers in Digital Interaction among IT Company Employees

Abstract

The paper presents the results of an empirical study of communication barriers that arise in the digital profes-sional interaction of IT company employees. The relevance of the study stems from a contradiction between the growing share of digitally mediated communication in the workplace and the insufficient development of understanding within labor psychology regarding the specifics of communication difficulties generated by the digital environment architecture. The study aimed to identify types of communication barriers specific to digital professional interaction and to assess differences in their perception by specialists and middle-level managers of IT companies. The research was conducted in two stages: a semi-structured interview with 25 IT-company employees followed by content analysis of the transcripts, and a survey of 80 employees using the author’s questionnaire called “Type and Degree of Communication Barrier Severity”, supplemented by scales of the Volitional Self-Control Inventory developed by Zverkov and Eidman. Data processing methods included fre-quency-based content analysis, descriptive statistics, and comparison of independent samples using the Mann–Whitney U-test. Based on the content analysis outcomes, 10 consistently reproducible categories of communication barriers were identified. Among them, the most common types were the parallel use of multi-ple communication channels, attention switching, and message overload. Survey data confirmed the highest severity of barriers related to channel parallelism, digital multitasking, and information fragmentation across platforms. Statistically significant differences were found in the perception of certain barriers between special-ists and middle managers, meaningfully consistent with the employee’s role position in the organization and the nature of their professional activity. The results allow for refining the classification of communication barri-ers as applied to the subject matter of labor psychology.