Exploring Space Management Goals in Institutional Care Facilities in China

Abstract

Space management has been widely examined in commercial facilities, educational facilities, and hospitals but not in China's institutional care facilities. Poor spatial arrangements, such as wasted space, dysfunctionality, and environment mismanagement, are increasing; in turn, the occupancy rate is decreasing due to residential dissatisfaction. To address these problems, this paper's objective is to explore the space management goals (SMGs) in institutional care facilities in China. Systematic literature analysis was adopted to set SMGs' principles, to identify nine theoretical SMGs, and to develop the conceptual model of SMGs for institutional care facilities. A total of 19 intensive interviews were conducted with stakeholders in seven institutional care facilities to collect data for qualitative analysis. The qualitative evidence was analyzed through open coding, axial coding, and selective coding. As a result, six major categories as well as their interrelationships were put forward to visualize the path diagram for exploring SMGs in China's institutional care facilities. Furthermore, seven expected SMGs that were explored from qualitative evidence were confirmed as China's SMGs in institutional care facilities by a validation test. Finally, a gap analysis among theoretical SMGs and China's SMGs provided recommendations for implementing space management in China's institutional care facilities.

A Multi-Stakeholder Delphi Study to Determine Key Space Management Components for Elderly Facilities in China

“…In accordance with the strategic facility planning, the recent space management definition further explained the added value of space management to organizational business. Based on aforementioned discussion, this paper adopts the definition of space management presented by Li et al [17], where they view space management as an interdisciplinary endeavor that incorporates space, users, activities and technologies to plan and manage a working/living environment that effectively support core business goals. It is noted that core business goals in elderly facilities include elderly residents' satisfaction, revenue growth, profitability growth, etc.…”

“…It is noted that core business goals in elderly facilities include elderly residents' satisfaction, revenue growth, profitability growth, etc. [17]. Table 1.…”

“…Li et al [17] Space management is an interdisciplinary endeavour that incorporates space, users, activities and technologies to plan and manage a working/living environment that effectively support core business goals.…”

“…Prior studies indicated that the conflict among stakeholder groups was inevitable as each stakeholder group had its own characteristic, values and behaviours that influenced its concerns on space management [17,48]. Therefore, more efforts should be made to balance the interests of all stakeholder groups for decision making related to space management components in elderly facilities.…”

“…It could be inferred that the majority space strategy were produced from the best practice of managing key space management components in elderly facilities. Besides, prior study on elderly facilities in China also pointed that informatization systems (IWMS) could not deliver efficiency to China's elderly facilities because the scale of most elderly facilities is small and medium with less than 300 beds [17].…”