What is served for breakfast? Exploring new frontiers in corporate real estate strategies and organizational culture

The quote “Culture eats strategy for breakfast” was made famous by Mark Field, president at Ford, in 2006 and has, ever since, been a guiding principle in management practice of corporations operating across the globe. The general management profession has widely embraced culture as a key factor in strategy design. However, in corporate real estate (CRE) management, it appears to be implicit within organizational differences at best, or lacking proper consideration at worst. Multinational corporations are faced with the need to centralize decision-making regarding their real estate to increase its agility in meeting rapidly changing business needs. In this new scenario of “acting globally and thinking locally,” understanding cultural variations across nations and organizations alike is crucial. Analyzing the link between CRE strategies and organizational culture is essential for delivering value to multinationals. Given this significant knowledge gap, we set out to explore these new frontiers through empirical research that uses data from a survey with 231 CoreNet Global members. This article provides a concise overview of the findings from this study that bears particular importance for the CRE management profession at large.