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This paper aims to investigate the service ecosystem of facility/facilities management (FM) against the Vargo and Lusch framework of service-dominant logic (S-D Logic).

A theoretical argument guided by previous research into service excellence in FM.

In the paper, two arguments are made. First, FM is still dominated by a contractual logic grounded in the tangible world of buildings and bills of quantities. Second, the reciprocal flow of services inherent in the S-D Logic offers a powerful tool for appreciating real service excellence and a business contribution from FM.

The S-D Logic framework is theoretical but, it is argued, has profound implications for the practical delivery of FM and the addition of both business and social value.

The reciprocal flow of service (as recognition, involvement and development) to FM’s “shop-floor” staff – the actual fee earners – may be the cornerstone of the co-creation and partnership, much espoused but less frequently practiced.

The concept of service provision through output specifications rather than input‐based specifications is currently occupying directors and managers within the service. While the debate continues, little research has been undertaken to find out the current spread of the new output specification and how it operates in NHS Trusts compared to the longer established input‐based service specification. This paper presents a study of around one‐third of the Trusts in England and provides a comparative analysis of the different specifications in use, whether in‐house or outsourced providers deliver the services to these Trusts, and how these providers are assessed for satisfactory performance. In addition, through a series of structured discussion forums, users’ requirements for the development of standardized performance metrics are established for the future management of output specifications.

Facility/facilities management’s (FM) continuing struggle with its search for a strategic identity is attested by publications of many leading authorities in the field. Some advocates of the alignment of strategic management with the real estate of facilities resource argue for new terms, for example infrastructure management or real estate asset management. This paper argues a different approach. FM is considered as a replicating memetic discourse; one that has traded the original strategic vision of the discipline’s founders for wider spread. To close the gap between strategic business alignment and operational management FM must learn to consider its performance with language and measures relevant to a particular business sector. While one can argue that core businesses should change the language in which they speak of FM, the blunt assertion is that most of the effort must be the other way. The alternative is that some other discourse will capture the strategic niche.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the analysis of portfolios of office properties using measures of business outputs, namely occupation efficiency and staff satisfaction.

Satisfaction is measured using a proprietary online survey instrument that has proved highly reliable and repeatable in three separate trials. The data on 192 buildings are analysed using data envelopment analysis.

Instant and significant differences are revealed between clusters of buildings and individual properties. The approach reveals inefficiencies that are concealed by more conventional cost‐based metrics.

The study has proven to be of use in gaining organisational commitment to strategic property improvements.

The authors are not aware of this approach having been applied elsewhere in either research or application.

Management fashions can be, and have been, conceptualized as narrative elements competing for replication and resources in the wider managerial discourse. Most wax and wane through a life cycle. Some achieve an extended place and even a transition to quasi‐ permanent institutions. Facilities/Facility Management (FM) is one such example, the purpose of this paper is to explore this.

The case draws FM's history since 1968 and asks whether it is compatible with recent and classic Darwin, thoughts on cultural evolution as a selection process between competing discourses.

Several properties of that history are argued as compatible with the theoretical stance taken particularly the mutation of the syntactic content to suit local circumstances and the dilution of the term's intent. Success attributes in the selective competition include contingency, securing an organizational home and mutability (what was represented became, more operational, less virulent but in the process more transmissible). In spreading globally the signifier/meme FM also proved mutatable to local managerial discourses.

The study supports a developing paradigm that it is possible to view organizations as ecologies of variously, memes, signifiers, narratives, representations or discourses. All five terms are shown to have been used to make similar significations by different authors. It shows how a natural history of narrative memes can be constructed.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the value of adopting an organizational ecological perspective to explore behavioural barriers in a UK operations & production management (OPM) setting.

An ethnographic case study approach was adopted with a narrative ecological stance to deconstruct the perceived realities and the origins of the inter‐departmental barriers applying Scott‐Morgan's unwritten rules methodology.

Despite an improvement in the physical proximity of the production and quality control departments, the qualitative approach revealed that latent, socially constructed drivers around management, interaction and communication reinforced inter‐departmental barriers. Conflicting enablers were ultimately responsible derived from the organizational structure, which impacted the firm's production resources.

As a case study approach, the specificity of the findings to this OPM setting should be explored further.

The paper demonstrates the use of theoretical frameworks in a production and manufacturing organization to provide insights for maximising process effectiveness. Using the organizational ecological perspective to uncover the socially constructed unwritten rules of the OPM setting beneficially impacted on operational effectiveness.

The paper contributes to organization ethnography literature by providing a detailed empirical analysis of manufacturing and services behaviour using an organizational ecology perspective. The example demonstrates that “qualitative” research can have real world impact in an advanced operational context. It also contributes to an ecological or complex adaptive systems view of organizations and, inter alia, their supply chains.

The aim of this study is to examine 15 NHS acute trusts in England that achieved high scores at all their hospitals in the first four national Patient Environment audits. No common external explanations were discernible. This paper seeks to examine whether the facilities managers responsible for the Patient Environment displayed a consistent leadership style.

Overall, six of the 15 trusts gave permission for the research to take place and a series of unstructured interviews and observations were arranged with 22 facilities managers in these trusts. Responses were transcribed and categorised through multiple iteration.

The research found common leadership and managerial behaviours, many of which could be identified from other literature. The research also identified managers deliberately devoting energy and time to creating networks of conversations. This creation of networks through managing conversation is behaviour less evident in mainstream leadership literature or in the current Department of Health and NHS leadership models.

The findings of this study offer managers (particularly those in FM and managers across NHS) a unique insight into the potential impact of leaders giving an opportunity to re‐model thinking on management and leadership and the related managerial development opportunities. It provides the leverage to move facilities management from the role of a commodity or support service, to a position as a true enabler of business.

Original research is presented in a previosuly under‐examined area. The paper illuminates how facilities management within trusts achieving high Patient Environment Action Team (PEAT) scores is led.