Strategic alignment of Corporate Real Estate

Purpose/value: With the growing complexity of organizations, it becomes increasingly important to tune the strategies of different business functions. In order to add maximum value to the organization, real estate strategies have to be aligned with corporate strategy. The purpose of this paper is to provide more insight in the alignment process itself, instead of focussing on distinguishing different possible strategies and their outcomes like most previous papers. Method: We compared and evaluated 8 models that claim to align corporate and real estate strategies and tried to pinpoint the mechanisms behind these alignments. The clearest alignment process is then applied to the rapidly changing care sector of the Netherlands. This sector was chosen because current developments place care institutions in a much more competitive market then before, so a change in driving forces is imminent. In total, 20 experts in this sector were interviewed extensively. Findings: Studies on alignment of corporate real estate tend to use many different corporate strategies, which is the main reason that there exist so many different alignments. And although possible real estate strategies are clear, the alignment itself is where most models become vague and rely on expert knowledge. To start alignment, the focus should be on the first step of strategy formulation, represented by the concept of driving forces from Tregoe and Zimmerman (1980). Results from the application to the care sector provide insight in the importance of each real estate strategy for each driving force for this sector specifically. But more importantly, they show how strategy alignment is still a disputable field with a lot of necessary research ahead.