Haja Rianne Appel-Meulenbroek

An end user’s perspective on activity-based office concepts

Purpose – The activity‐based office concept of the modern office is set to increase productivity through the stimulation of interaction and communication while retaining employee satisfaction and reducing the accommodation costs. Although some research has gone into understanding the added value, there is still a need for sound data on the relationship between office design, its intentions and the actual use after implementation. The purpose of this paper is to address this issue.Design/methodology/approach – An evaluative study on the effectiveness of activity‐based office concepts was carried out to gain more insight in their use. The study included relevant literature on workplace design, combined with an observation and a survey of 182 end‐users from four different service organizations in The Netherlands.Findings – The findings from these case studies underline some known benefits and disadvantages of activity‐based office concepts, and provide insight in the importance of several physical, social an...

Corporate branding: an exploration of the influence of CRE

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to understand how corporate real estate (CRE) can add value to corporate branding and how corporate branding strategies for CRE can be determined.Design/methodology/approach – The paper presents a theoretical background for corporate branding and real estate and links these two concepts through interviews with 19 CRE managers of service providers.Findings – Analysis of the relationship between CRE and the corporate brand brings forward two links: CRE influences the perception of the corporate brand directly and indirectly (via employee behaviour). Corporate identity and its six characteristics (structure, strategy, culture, communication, behaviour and design) formed a useful tool to determine the proper branding strategy for an organization. Especially, “design” and “communication” define the way CRE should communicate the corporate brand. Two location issues are seen as the most important CRE aspects to support branding strategies.Research limitations/implications ...