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Paper: eres2014_125
| Paper title: | Beating the crunch? How corporate real estate management responsed to the credit crunch |
| Authors: | Dalderup, Ruben; Monique H. Arkesteijn, Louk Heijnders, Hans De Jonge |
| Summary: | The macroeconomic environment is important for businesses and their competitiveness. The 2007 credit crunch has dominated Western economies for over seven years. In which, corporations have been confronted with dropping demand and profits. Their most common response is to cut back on spending to conserve cash, particularly on investments that can be deferred or delayed. Since real estate is the second largest cost factor; corporate real estate activities have direct financial impact on corporate performance as well as indirect influence through accommodating core business activities. Strategic corporate real estate management (CREM) is becoming better aligned with core business strategy, which should increase the value that CREM adds to the firm. Researchers, however, believe there is a need to test which strategy or combination of strategies is most successful in assisting in accomplishing the firm’s core business objective in both good and bad economic conditions combining information on firms’ financial performance, core strategies, corporate real estate strategies and real estate operating decisions. This paper provides an understanding of CREM within five multinational corporations from different industries and demonstrates the impact of the economic conjuncture on their CRE activities. The conceptual model links four elements: (1) macroeconomic environment, (2) corporate business results, (3) corporate strategy and (4) real estate strategy. Two models are designed to predict the linkage or alignment between the elements: (1) the impact matrix and (2) the real estate classification model. According to the impact matrix, corporations that are sensitive to the economic context show to respond more incrementally. According to the real estate classification model, corporations that operate customer-focused real estate show to respond quicker and more vigorously. The research demonstrates that the credit crunch has directly and indirectly influenced CREM strategies. The case studies show that the credit crunch brings change in the organizational structure and their real estate strategies. There are two contradicting responses towards the credit crunch: (1) conservative decision-making or (2) increase of competitive advantage. Cost reductions lie at the basis of all real estate strategies. The corporate real estate response is related to the impact of the credit crunch on the corporation, their industry and the type of real estate. |
| Type: | |
| Year of publication: | 2014 |
| Series: | ERES:conference |
| Download paper: | /pdfs/eres2014_125.content.pdf |
| Citation: | Dalderup, Ruben; Monique H. Arkesteijn, Louk Heijnders, Hans De Jonge (2014). Beating the crunch? How corporate real estate management responsed to the credit crunch. 21st Annual European Real Estate Society Conference in Bucharest, Romania, http://itc.scix.net/paper/eres2014_125 |
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