Adapting to Change: The Increasing Importance of Operating Performance in Corporate Real Estate Management Transformation

Successful corporate real estate management (CREM) has enormous potential to positively influence a company's success. Therefore, the contribution of CREM can be divided into three mechanisms: Operating performance, real estate performance and financial performance. Current dynamics in the corporate environment due to megatrends and structural changes are leading to a greater focus on subjects such as new workplace concepts, improving employee satisfaction or the increasing importance of employer branding, suggesting that the contribution of the operating performance to the company's success is increasingly relevant.This study aims to investigate whether the shift towards the rising importance of operating performance can be statistically verified. To this end, survey data from a 2019 study is compared with current study results in order to identify shifts in relevance. In a second step, a confirmation-disconfirmation analysis is carried out to examine companies' current ability to utilize the potential of operating performance. The results of the study indicate whether CREM is currently able to unlock the potential of the operating performance. Additionally, the discrepancy between the relevance and implementability of measures can be used to derive an immediate need for action for CREM to increase CREM's contribution to their company's success.