Anna-Liisa Sarasoja

Reflecting on future research concerning the added value of FM

Purpose – This paper aims to summarize recent research findings and reflections on The Added Value of Facilities Management (FM) and to outline perspectives for future research and development of the added value of FM. Design/methodology/approach – The article is based on reflections on contributions to the recently published book “The Added Value of Facilities Management” and related future studies, as well as further exploration of five main themes. Findings – Added value is expected to be central in the future development of FM, which is confirmed by recent foresight studies. There is a need for a better understanding of alignment between FM and core business, performance measurement methods and how models such as the FM Value Map can be of value to the involved stakeholders. Corporate social responsibility (CSR), sustainability and branding have great potential to add value and to elevate FM to become a strategic partner with corporate top management. Management of stakeholders’ perception of value an...

Modelling sustainability maturity in corporate real estate management

Purpose – Sustainability in corporate real estate management (CREM) has been lately recognized as an integral part of almost every business. However, its perception might extremely differ in various industries. Sustainable CREM practices have been extensively analyzed in recent studies, yet real estate is an ambiguous field and the practices still lack holistic understanding. This research aimed to summarize and systematize the present sustainable CREM practices and propose a generic sustainability maturity model for CREM. Design/methodology/approach – The research process was implemented in accordance with the grounded theory approach. Research data were collected in semi-structured interviews with major Finnish companies, recognized for their environmental work. The scope of the research was nine interviews. Findings – The result of this research is the generic sustainability maturity model for CREM. It consists of 18 most typical sustainable CREM practices at the companies interviewed. The model demons...

Facilities management driving green building certification: a case from Finland

Purpose – The aim of this study is to identify and understand the role of facility services in the environmental performance of existing office buildings.Design/methodology/approach – The study observes how a facilities management (FM) service provider develops its service processes to meet environmental efficiency objectives. The environmental objectives are adopted from a commonly used green building rating system. The developed processes and services are then analysed and tested against a case facility.Findings – The results indicate that FM service processes have both direct and indirect influence on the building environmental performance metrics. The results show that, by relatively light changes and modifications to the FM service processes, quite extensive environmental benefits can be achieved.Research limitations/implications – The study is preliminary and the results are based on the single case study. Only one service provider was assessed. Moreover, the case study represents a situation where ...

Breaking the circle of blame for sustainable buildings – evidence from Nordic countries

Purpose – The study aims to examine how the vicious circle of blame for sustainable buildings can be turned into virtuous loops of adaptation when considering sustainable buildings and what are the drivers for tenants and investors regarding sustainable buildings and gaining insights of investors’ and tenants’ corporate responsibility (CR) actions. Design/methodology/approach – The paper consists of a literature review and two surveys. The literature review concentrates on exploring investors’ and tenants’ CR and sustainability drivers. Empirical evidence was gathered via two specific surveys. The first survey targeted investors, and the second survey targeted tenants to determine the focus areas of sustainability. Findings – The findings of this study indicate that the vicious circle of blame can be turned into one of cooperation with respect to sustainable buildings if the mutual drivers for improving sustainability are linked with investor–tenant collaboration. Based on the survey, the tenants claim th...

The green preferences of commercial tenants in Helsinki

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to find out the green preferences of corporate occupiers in relation to their occupied offices. The study aims to focus on the preferences of the end‐users at the organisational level. It also aims to study the relative importance of these preferences against one another and to seek the differences between respondent groups.Design/methodology/approach – The survey is a case study approach concentrating on the situation in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area (Finland) in the summer of 2009. The survey was conducted as an internet‐based questionnaire with e‐mail invitations. The importance of nine given green attributes of the office buildings were ranked on a five‐point Likert scale. A total of 90 responses were analysed.Findings – The results show that location achieved the highest importance, even though it was rated in terms of the environmental sense only. The energy efficiency of a building was ranked second. The indicative results suggest that industry sector and the...

Marketing green buildings – well‐structured process or forgotten minor detail? Evidence from Finland

Previous research has shown that buildings have a significant impact on the environment and small changes in their sustainability can create major improvements to the current environmental impact of the whole society (Eichholtz et al. 2009; Junnila 2004). The technology needed to build environmentally efficient buildings and the knowledge about their benefits is available, however, the ways of marketing these benefits to the public and customers and through this increasing the amount of green buildings, has not been a subject of much research. The aim of this article is to examine the current marketing situation of green buildings from a Finnish real estate developeris perspective and deepen the marketis understanding on this subject. The theoretical part of the paper is conducted through an extensive literature study and for the empirical part; three different building development projects were examined. Great amounts of marketing material provided by the real estate developer were studied and interviews were made with their specialists on the green building field. Results indicate that the environmentally efficient characteristics of the buildings are not considered to be their major selling arguments but simply something that is expected in todayis market and thus the green marketing actions of the real estate development company were quite ineffective and subtle. Based on the results of this study, it seems that at the moment, the marketing of green buildings lacks green ambition and not all are equally convinced about their differentiation potential. If the building market will end up in a situation where having a certification is enough in terms of being environmentally friendly, the development of a more sustainable built environment will fail, as no developer will be motivated to be innovative and more sustainable. However, by increasingly concentrating on the different benefits of green buildings and effectively communicating those to the customers, greenness can be made into a truly competitive marketing argument. The question is about being innovative and finding ways to compete differently than the competitors.

Office Relocation Management in Finland Challenges and Service Opportunities

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to increase the understanding of the management of office relocations in Finnish organisations with a focus on the use of, and need for, external advisory services. Design/methodology/approach – The study used a sequential mixed method approach. First, the use of relocation-related services, and organisations’ perception of the need for them, was assessed through a questionnaire sent to all organisations with more than 50 employees in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area (HMA). The data includes 83 responses. Subsequently, service experiences, perceived service needs, and the challenges that organisations face in relocation are studied through thematic interviews with 15 organisations that have recently relocated. Findings – The findings show that, despite facing many challenges when relocating, many organisations do not consider using external service providers. Most organisations do not acknowledge the complexity of the process until afterwards, and they also lack knowle...

Short-distance corporate relocation: the employee experience

Purpose – This paper aims to examine short-distance firm relocations, the most frequent form of relocation, to better understand how employees as individuals experience those relocations. Design/methodology/approach – This study was a multiple-case study with five organisations that had relocated within the same metropolitan area during the previous 18 months. To understand why and how the relocation was carried out, 15 semi-structured interviews were conducted with company representatives who were actively involved in making decisions and executing the relocation of their organisation. Subsequently, to study the employees’ experience and perception of the process, 17 employees who did not have an assigned role in the process were also interviewed. Findings – The findings show that even within the same organization, people experience relocation differently; therefore, the employees should not be treated as one object of change but as several individuals who experience change. Further, it was identified th...

Remote energy management benefits in retail building portfolios

Purpose – The study aims to investigate the effects of a remote energy management service to the energy consumption of retail buildings. The study focuses on analysing the changes in energy consumption after the implementation of a facility service concept where building processes are optimized with a remote energy management system. The paper seeks to demonstrate that remotely operated building management practices, which allow high competence service for all facilities, have a positive impact, beyond traditional facility services, on energy and environmental performance of buildings. Design/methodology/approach – The research analyses the metered energy consumption of two retail building portfolios comprising altogether 44 properties. Additionally, secondary data are collected from archive reviews, observation and interviews. Findings – The research shows that remote energy management service reduced the total energy consumption during the two-year service period by 12 and 6 per cent depending on the po...