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This study aims to offer a mid-range theory conceptualization of factors central to understanding and facilitating business actor engagement (BAE). Reports on a study of real estate companies and their sustainable development goal (SDG) driven business initiatives. The aim is to identify the factors that need to be in place to facilitate positive engagement amongst actors in business-to-business (B2B) settings.

A case study of real estate companies (landlords of business premises) and their business customers (tenants of offices and warehouses) – comprising interviews and workshops – offer insights related to the factors that need to be in place to facilitate BAE types and outcomes.

The identified central factors of BAE – needed to understand and facilitate positive engagement to unfold – are the actors’ perception of: willingness (to act), resourcefulness (to contribute and solve issues) and influence (to affect decisions) regarding solutions related to the business initiative at hand. Failing to facilitate these factors may result in negative outcomes of BAE where “engagement” merely constitutes perceived obligations and responsibilities.

The study offers theoretical and managerial insights on how to manage the factors needed for BAE. It also sheds light on how actors can use SDG-driven business initiatives to achieve sustainability goals.

It contributes to the concept of BAE, by emphasizing the dynamics of engagement, from the motivational and behavioral dimensions specific to B2B settings. It offers insights how to managerially cogovern rather than control BAE. It presents central factors needed to include and capacitate customers, facilitating successful implementations of SDG-driven business initiatives to reduce absent or negative outcomes.

This research aims to analyze how companies in the industry act as orchestrators and manage participants in their networks. The service industry has received little attention from scholars in this field, and this research gap was investigated in this study. Qualitative case study research with an exploratory approach is applied in this research so that in-depth insights can be obtained. Mamikos.com, a platform for room rent in Indonesia, was used as the research subject. Mamikos does not only facilitate tenants to find rooms to live in but also manages how landlords can serve tenants better and help tenants understand what the landlords want. In other words, Mamikos seeks to smoothen the value stream from landlords to tenants and vice versa. This research has implications that the value orchestrator must be able to facilitate the parties in the ecosystem to obtain the fundamental values needed and other side values so that they are loyal to the ecosystem managed by the orchestrator.

Although the Singapore model of ethnic integration through its public housing programme is well known, the formula for replicating its success elsewhere remains underexplored. This study aims to identify the criteria for successful transplantation, specifically by identifying the housing tenure types that are most amenable to the implementation of the Singapore model.

Through a comparative study of two common law jurisdictions – Singapore and England – this article highlights the differences in their housing landscapes and how such differences impact upon the adoption of ethnic integration policies through housing. The article also unpacks, through a cross-disciplinary lens, the concepts of public housing and housing tenures, drawing heavily on socio-legal and housing literature.

The authors observe that the implementation of ethnic integration policies is best justified and most easily achieved in leasehold estates that exhibit a strong tenurial relationship with the state retaining a more than notional role. Public housing in Singapore being an exemplar of this model, the implementation of its ethnic integration policy is relatively straightforward. By contrast, the shrinking public housing sector in England means that adoption of a similar policy would have limited reach. Even then, the political–legal environment in England that promotes home ownership is potentially hostile to the adoption of such policy as it may be seen as an infringement of private property right.

The cross-jurisdiction comparison is supplemented by an interdisciplinary analysis that seeks to bridge differences in the categorisation of tenure in housing and law literatures so as to promote cross-disciplinary dialogue.

This paper aims to explore the impact of COVID-19 on office space in Johannesburg. This study further explores the role of changing work practices in the office sector in South Africa because of the pandemic and its impact on future office space use planning and management.

To understand the footprints that the COVID-19 pandemic has left on the office space market in Johannesburg, this study uses semi-structured interviews, which were administered to corporate office users, and a thematic analysis was adopted to understand the views, perspectives and expectations of office users.

The study showed that space users perceive COVID-19-induced remote working as having benefits, opportunities and challenges. A notable shift in office space utilization has emerged, with employees increasingly opting for roles that permit remote work. This newfound flexibility, accommodating both on-site and remote work, often makes working from home more appealing than traditional office environments that may no longer align with users’ preferences for office spaces.

The study is limited to Johannesburg, South Africa, and may not apply to other African markets. Ten in-depth interviews were conducted, and analysis and results were deduced; this may be considered a limitation of this study.

The pandemic’s impact has brought about irreversible changes, compelling policymakers and business leaders to strategize and prepare. This proactive stance aims to prevent avoidable challenges for employees and companies during future pandemics. A thoughtful approach to the post-pandemic world can usher positive changes in the office and property sector. This includes the coexistence of both remote work and on-site working models.

This paper provides valuable insight into some of the outcomes of the COVID-19 pandemic in South Africa that are essential for future office space use planning and management. The insights from this study extend the literature and provide novel knowledge based on an office sector in the “global south.”

The current literature has not investigated the perceived value of energy efficiency by households, regardless of financial benefits. Furthermore, there is a severe lack of research that investigates the effectiveness of the current format of EPC-labels. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is twofold: to study how households value energy efficiency in the housing market, regardless of price effects.

This study uses multiple hedonic regression models to analyse 706,778 Flemish properties for sale or rent between 2019 and 2023. The data is provided by Immoweb – the largest online real estate platform in Belgium. Given that the selling market is driven by different mechanisms than the rental market, the data set was divided in sold (522,164 listings) and rented properties (184,614 listings).

The ambiguous results of the A-label in the selling market indicate that the “class evaluation effect” found in related markets which use labels (e.g. household appliances) is also present in the housing market. However, the results of the other (lower) labels clearly show that owners do value energy improvements within labels, and this effect becomes stronger as the EPC-label becomes better. The rental market shows the opposite results. Energy improvements are only valued if they translate into a financial benefit. Taking these findings into account, the second part of this research shows that rescaling the EPC-label creates an incentive for improvements within labels.

This paper provides novel insights by studying the perceived value of energy efficiency in the absence of financial benefits and critically studying the effectiveness of the EPC-labels in their current shape. By investigating both the sales and rental market, the authors are able to make a comparison which creates valuable insights for academia, governments and real estate professionals.

This paper examines rent determinants and their relationship with commercial office property rents.

The method adopted in this study differs from that of previous studies on this topic. Firstly, based on the survey of the viewpoints of experts, Relative Importance Index (RII) analysis was used to identify rent determinants and to rank and ensure their relevance and validity in the Sri Lankan context. Secondly, sampling of data related to 115 office properties collected from property tenants and landlords located within the central built-up area of Colombo City was conducted using a multi-methods approach to carry out an objective hedonic analysis of office rents.

This research utilizes RII and hedonic models to provide insights into determinants and relationships. Both analyses confirm that the three top drivers of commercial office rent are distance from the major town center, availability of parking space and the condition of the property. In addition to these three factors, hedonic models reveal that the age of the property and the availability of a conference hall also play a relevant role in explaining office rents. Given the disparities in the findings of the two methods, further examination was able to confirm that factors such as distance from the major town center, parking availability, age of the property, presence of a conference hall, building condition, floor size, business type and type of building are likely to influence commercial office rent. These findings reflect elements such as the quality, newness and better facilities of different office properties.

This systematic study and analysis of office rent for the guidance of real estate investors can support sound investment decisions, potentially leading to more financially sound property development, reduced public debt levels and improved public-private financing. Further, the research findings offer valuable insights to real estate investors, developers and planners regarding location decisions for office development quality enhancements in future office developments.

This research provides fresh insights into the local scale office market, an area where limited evidence currently exists. Further, the methodology adopted provides evidence that hedonic analysis, supported by a multi-method approach, can mitigate the subjective judgments made by professionals.

This paper aims to highlight a broader definition of good building performance that goes beyond the traditional emphasis on technical aspects, only adopting the lens of the social construction of technology (SCOT) in the empirical space of the workplace sector. Several building performance evaluation (BPE) methods focus on technical aspects such as energy consumption, indoor environmental conditions and compliance with building regulations and standards. Technical aspects, albeit important goals, only embed a partial component of what buildings are expected to deliver. There is growing interest in considering the organisational and experiential expectations of building performance, particularly integrating various views of performance as expected by different user groups.

The paper adopts an archival research method to analyse the archive of the workplace consultants DEGW, particularly focusing on their work on London’s Broadgate development in the 1980s and the 1990s.

The findings reveal how voices from a pluralistic client organisation can be addressed to articulate a broad definition of building performance that integrates different viewpoints encompassing technical, organisational and experiential expectations. In DEGW’s work, the views on building performance of various stakeholders involved in the everyday use and management of buildings are identified without imposing predetermined agendas or research notions of performance. Particular emphasis is given to understanding clients as not a homogenous entity but consisting of different interest groups, which implies multiple conceptualisations of building performance and the building itself.

The performance expectations of a building vary between organisations and even within any organisation. Moreover, the needs of an organisation will change over time, and the BPE criteria need to be changed to ensure better alignment between organisations and the physical spaces they occupy. A critical reflection on the conceptualisation of “users” and “building” in BPE methods is required to create an integrated approach towards building performance.

The paper offers insights by adopting the theoretical lens of SCOT to explore an integrated approach to building performance that captures the varied needs of building users through the example of London’s Broadgate development.

Delay in housing adaptation is a major problem, especially in assessing if homes are suitable for the occupants and in determining if the occupants are qualified for the Disabled Facilities Grant (DFG). This paper describes the development of two self-administered intelligent integrated assessment tools from the DFG Adapt-ABLE system: (1) The Home Suitability Assessment Platform, which is a preventive mechanism that allows assessment of the suitability of homes based on occupants’ mobility status and (2) an indicative assessment platform that determines if the applicants are qualified for the DFG to prevent lengthy delays.

The adopted method aligned with a development study approach: a grounded literature review, a severity measurement approach, two stakeholder engagement workshops, four brainstorming sessions and four focus group exercises. The system development relied on Entity–Relationship Diagram (ERD) technique for data structures and database systems design. It uses DFG context sensitivity with alignment with DFG guidance, interlinkages and interoperability between the assessment tools and other platforms of the integrated Adapt-ABLE system.

The assessment tools are client-level outcomes related to accessibility, usability and activity based on the assessment process. The home suitability platform shows the percentage of the suitability of a home with assessment results that suggest appropriate action plans based on individual mobility status. The indicative assessment combines the function of referral, allocation, assessment and test of resources into an integrated platform. This enables timely assessment, decision-making and case-escalation by Occupational Therapists based on needs criteria and the eligibility threshold.

These assessment tools are useful for understanding occupants’ perception of their physical housing environment in terms of accessibility, suitability and usability based on basic activities of daily living and their mobility status. The indicative self-assessment tool will substantially cut down the application journey. The developed tools have been recommended for use in the CSJ Disability Commission report and the UK government Guidance on DFGs for local authorities in England.

This study aims to explore the spatial externalities of apartment vacancy rates on housing rent by considering multiple vacancy durations.

This research uses smart meter data to measure unobservable vacant houses. This study made a significant contribution by applying building-level smart meter data to housing market analysis. It examined whether vacancy duration significantly affected apartment rent and whether the relationship between apartment rent and vacancy rate differed depending on the level of housing rent.

The primary finding indicates that there is a significant negative correlation between apartment rent and vacancy duration. Considering the spatial externalities of apartment vacancy rates, the apartment vacancy rates of surrounding buildings did not show any statistical significance. Moreover, quantile regression results indicate that although the bottom 10% of apartment rent levels showed a negative correlation with all vacancy durations, the top 10% showed no statistical significance related to vacancies.

This study measures the extent of spatial externalities that can differentiate taxation based on housing vacancies.

The findings indicate that landlords have asymmetric information about their buildings compared with the surrounding buildings, and the extent to which price adjusts for long-term vacancies differs depending on the level of apartment rent.