Research
Research themes
Facilities and organisational goals
The aim is to understand, evidence and, where appropriate, measure the contribution of facilities management (FM) to the organisational or business goals.
Recent projects include exploratory work to understand pupils' views on the design and condition of schools and their influence on learning and an in-depth study of the leadership behaviours exhibited by facilities managers responsible for excellent patient environments and patient outcomes.
Previously we have examined the impact university estates have on undergraduate choice of location, while ongoing research in the sector looks at developments in learning space. Recent research examined the introduction of patient choice in the health service and specifically how critical facilities services are in influencing patient choice.
We're continuing research into the impact of well designed and maintained space and the resulting benefits to services. In office environments where workplaces have been designed to influence the informal culture and networks of the organisation, studies have shown conclusive and significant differences in occupiers' perceptions of productivity.
DBA, PhD and MBA researchers have ongoing projects working with schools, housing associations and hospitals. Such research invites collaboration with other areas of professional expertise within Sheffield Hallam University. The Centre is currently developing programmes with researchers from the Faculty of Health and Wellbeing, the Centre for Science Education and the Systems Engineering group within the Faculty of Arts, Computing, Engineering and Sciences.
Lean and sustainable facilities
The centre previously developed a research theme of performance measurement in FM, arguing that measures should reflect business outputs where possible. The debate developed, highlighting that a reliance on cost per unit area as the dominant measure actually encouraged organisations to hold on to too much low-quality estate - the opposite of what we termed lean assets. The theme has been taken forward in specific sectors and practical applications.
Under the theme of lean assets the centre has identified the need for a fundamental change in approach to asset management in buildings, particularly where there is a need to deliver better services from less, but better designed and used, space. The carbon benefit of such an approach remains to be quantified but is arguably substantial.
Facilities and narrative ecologies
The argument that a physical workplace is the setting for an organisational ecology goes back to the foundation of facility management as opposed to facilities management. It has recently been linked to new advances in general organisational theory and the centre's work on the emergent properties of organisations as complex evolving systems.
Applied work under this theme has focused on helping individual clients influence organisational development via their workplace design. For example, the centre worked with GCHQ, whose new accommodation project is aimed at a more agile culture. The results have been publicly credited with improved responsiveness to terrorist incidents. Other studies have helped Scottish Courage, BP, Egg plc, SAB Miller, the ANZ Bank and the DTI.
More generally Sheffield Business School is developing this theme as a joint interest group between CFMD and the Centre for Individual and Organisational Development.
