Significance of change management to enable sustainable outsourcing of building operations and maintenance

Abstract

In this present globalised era, outsourcing has become a very popular and much sought after procurement strategy for building operations and maintenance. Where competitive business environment is concerned, outsourcing contributes towards reaping supplier specialisation that would either be unavailable or too costly for the organisations to procure. Generally, a sustainable procurement system should be capable enough to deliver the services free of disruptions. However, outsourcing can bring about changes in working patterns, organisational culture and management styles which can possibly disrupt the activities of an organisation. In order to circumvent such incongruities that may result from outsourcing, organisations need to adopt a measured approach towards this change. Accordingly, this research aims to investigate the importance of change management to enable sustainable outsourcing of building operations and maintenance.

Case study was selected as the most suitable research method for this study. The reasons being, the study needed to focus on in-depth decisions and behavioural attitudes of individuals and groups within and between organisations. The study was conducted through a multiple case study that included eight cases which had obtained the services by partial or full outsourcing. Furthermore, the primary source of data was collected through semi-structured interviews and content analysis was used to interpret and analyse significant findings from the interview transcripts. Case study findings revealed that, organisations prefer outsourcing in order to achieve cost benefits and to acquire external expertise. Moreover, if the changes emanating from outsourcing are not managed satisfactorily, it would result in possible disruptions. However, to make changes happen successfully is one of the most challenging tasks faced by the leadership and corporate management of the organisations.