CRE stakeholder categorisation: Applicability of the four group technique

Since Freeman (1984) stakeholders are an established concept in management sciences and practices. This is not different in the field of corporate real estate management, where stakeholder analysis and administration became an essential tool for strategy design and execution. Delft scholars traditionally divide corporate real estate stakeholders in four groups – general management, asset management, facility management and technical management. More recently Den Heijer (2012) reframed these groups and positioned the stakeholders external to the corporationin the same four groups. She then used these extended groups to categorise all stakeholders of the accommodation of universities. More applications or critical publications of the early four group categorisation technique or the extended version of it don’t exist. This is a lacuna for the development of the corporate real estate management discipline and for its education.This paper aims at deepening the understanding of the four group categorisation technique as used by many scholars in the field of corporate real estate management, and at checking its applicability. The research starts with a short survey, through literature and interviews, into the current issues on the categorisation of corporate real estate stakeholders and the four group categorisation in particular. Thereafter the five cases published by Edwards & Ellison (2004) are analysed using the four stakeholder group technique. This leads to an assessment of the perspectives and categories used for each group and the fit between them. The outcome is a series of five well-considered examples that can be used for further research and for the education of the four group stakeholder categorisation technique.