Search results

German (corporate-) real estate management departments have been facing the challenge of poor data quality for years. This holds them back from generating efficiency potentials via the use of new methods from the field of digitalisation and from coping with the increasing requirements from the ESG context. The purpose of this paper is to explore why German (corporate-) real estate managements (do not) share data with their real estate service providers to address the data quality challenge and identify possible solutions.

To answer the research question, the reasoned action approach, an established theory from psychology for predicting human behaviour, is used. The relationships between the constructs are determined using linear regression. The study participants are almost exclusively from Germany.

The organisational milieu (perceived behavioural control) has a significant impact on the behaviour of sharing data with real estate service providers. Especially the change of contractual arrangements (data-driven contracts) seems to be crucial for the improvement of information logistics.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, for the first time, the reasoned action approach is used within the German real estate industry to predict organisational behaviour in the context of digitalisation.

To take full advantage of new technologies (e.g. machine learning), a consistent and more comprehensive knowledge sharing across organisational boundaries is required. The real estate industry often faces this challenge as well. The paper aims to approach this circumstance by analysing the real estate supply chain (RESC) and aims to identify ways to achieve a more disruption-free flow of information.

To answer the research question, a cross-sectional study was conducted using a standardised online questionnaire and structural equation modelling. The majority of the study participants came from German-speaking countries. The structural equation model was used to examine the relationships between the factors inter-organisational relationship, knowledge sharing skills and knowledge sharing.

The authors found that inter-organisational relationship has a significant influence on knowledge sharing and thus on the occurrence of information flow disruptions. Aligning shared goals of parties plays a major role to improve inter-organisational relationship. Control and supervision does not show any significant effect. Knowledge sharing skills in turn have an influence on knowledge sharing.

The alignment of interests and the creation of trust should be established in the future as core elements within the framework of contract negotiations, the lived contract and the contract itself, in order to reduce disruptions in the flow of information.

From the perspective of knowledge sharing, this study attempts to identify necessities within the framework of contractual design options that simplify and promote the inter-organisational use of algorithms to increase transactional efficiency.