Social enterprise applications in an urban facilities management setting : a service delivery model

This research aims to contribute to the area of new alignment in Facilities Management(FM). By taking urban FM as the focus of the research, this research highlights how FM islooking at a new way to deliver services to the community, which involves themanagement of public facilities, infrastructure and its associated services. This newalignment in FM gives new ideas to many researchers by using the urban FM concept toexplore many possibilities and putting it in a proper place to improve the current servicesrelated to FM. The concept of urban FM moves away from the classical view of the'traditional service provider' approach that involves the private sector such as inprivatisation, outsourcing, or even joint venture approaches. This study tries to lookbeyond that by looking at the possibilities for having a flexible platform that could involvepublic agencies or the private sector, or both together, as a new way of delivering servicesto the public and the community. Therefore, it is important to understand the concept ofurban FM and its underlying philosophy in order to realise the inter-relationships with thesocial enterprise principle, which could possibly offer a new approach to improve thecurrent service delivery.In particular, this thesis outlines the enablers for a new service delivery model which meetsthe needs of social enterprise applications in an urban FM setting, for the purpose ofmanaging community facilities operations. The research has thoroughly investigated theactivities related to urban FM around the world including the UK, and the same goes forthe social enterprise practices. It was done by looking at different perspectives to reveal theenablers of the service delivery model so that it can be used extensively. Having this inplace helped the researcher to develop a strong base in identifying the initial enablersbefore particularly seeking the enablers for a Malaysian setting. Looking at the mainthemes; urban FM and social enterprise with the aim of building a theory, a thoroughreview of the literature provided a strong basis before looking into current practices.Case studies were conducted at several local councils in Malaysia to gain a betterunderstanding of the contextual factors in seeking the applications of the new servicedelivery model. Although it was a new approach to apply this model for Malaysianapplications, having expert views on this to validate the findings helped to explain thefindings in an appropriate way. The contribution to knowledge in the field may be viewedin terms of a critical examination about the urban FM concept and its relationship withsocial enterprise principles, as well as demonstrating its potential success within an urbanFM setting. This study also adds to the current empirical evidence being studied,particularly for the Malaysian context. Derived from that, this uncovered a flexible modelfor delivering services in managing community facilities operations. This suggested a'Ridley-Duff model, Type B' of a social enterprise organisational form as a suitablecompany or agency, with combining the government and business aspect which suits anurban FM setting in this context of study. Moreover, realising the benefits from the'flexible model' provides added value to the contribution to the knowledge in this area,which also can be taken for further research in other FM areas