Strategy and Place

Book excerpt: Organisational boundaries are being transformed by downsizing, outsourcing, and networked links with customers and suppliers. Unprecedented advances in telecommunications and 'virtuality' are changing how companies occupy real space. To survive, managers must radically rethink the physical aspects of their companies. Based on cutting-edge research at such companies as Pacific Bell, Lever Brothers and Merrill Lynch, STRATEGY AND PLACE presents a framework for making key business decisions about one of the organisation's most valuable assets: its physical facilities and properties. O'Mara outlines three main approaches to real estate and facility management decision making: Incrementalism, where only short-term commitments to space are made and capital expenditures minimised; Standardisation, in which control over both design and management procedures is strictly maintained with centralised decision making; and Value-based, where organisational values factor into all design-related decisions, and procedures are flexible to meet the needs of individual parts of the organisation. O'Mara explains the advantages and disadvantages of each strategy, and shows how to apply them appropriately, based on an understanding of the profound impact of competitive uncertainty in today's new business environment.