Facilities management value addition in corporate social responsibility

Abstract

Corporate activities have a major impact on society environment, thus the concern and pressure on corporate activities become a recurrent theme. Especially, the operations of corporates in the built environment is highly violated with the well-being of employee, customer, society, and environment. To overcome the impacts of the built environment operation, corporates need to adopt an effective management practice within the built environment as a part of their social responsibility. Facilities Management (FM) is a profession, which manages the built environment effectively. Therefore, this research aimed at assessing the value addition of FM in social responsibilities of the corporates through effective built environment management practices. Initially, situational analysis was conducted to identify the existing CSR practices in Sri Lanka and then the FM value added practices in key areas of CSR were found to achieve the aim. A qualitative research approach was adopted and seven (07) semi-structured expert interviews were carried out for data collection and two (02) interviews were carried out to validate the findings. The results of the content analysis revealed that CSR practices are relatively at a low level in Sri Lanka. As well as, most of FM professionals are involved in the operational and tactical level function. However, facilities managers perform energy management, water management, waste management, asset management and maintenance management, health and safety, stakeholder management, compliance management, risk management, procurement and contract management and workplace management roles in an organisation. Throughout those FM practices, part of CSR of an organization could be fulfilled.