Perceptions of Local Government Facilities
Chief Investigators: Dr Greg Missingham
Associate Investigator: Professor Russell Kenley
Industry Parner: City of Glen Eira
PhD Student: Christopher Heywood
Funded by: ARC SPIRT (Strategic Partnerships with Industry - Research and Training Scheme) grant 2001-2003, Australian Postgraduate Award (Industry) and the City of Glen Eira.
The strategic management of organisational property portfolios aims to meet the broad goal of supporting organisational business outcomes. Local government's business outcomes may be characterised as delivery of service to the municipality's community. This research concentrates on the achievement of organisational outcomes through the municipality's facilities.
Despite ongoing advances in the quantification of facilities' performance to aid management and decision-making, the management of, decision-making about, and the use of local government facilities seems to be driven by perceptions as much as any quantified objectivity.
From this observation and the proposition that perceptions are the psychological responses to an environment, this research uses a qualitative empirical approach to investigate how those responses are played out within three levels:
- the community
- local government administrators
- political decision-makers
Three case studies of service delivery facilities within a single municipality provide the data to examine responses to the facilities themselves and the processes used in their management.
It is expected that one outcome of this research will be enhanced considerations of the human dimension at community and organisational levels in local government management.