Sustainable provision of school buildings in the Netherlands: An empirical productivity analysis of local government school building operations

Building operations and construction are responsible for a large part of global energy use and carbon dioxide emissions. In this paper, we present an analysis of the efficiency and productivity of the provision of school buildings by Dutch municipalities. A cost function is estimated for the years 2005–2016 using stochastic frontier methods...

The infuence of the physical home work environment on perceived productvity during the COVID-19 pandemic

Due to the COVID-19 crisis, Dutch employees were told to work from home as much as possible. Homeworking can have benefits both for employees and employers, as some experience a productivity increase and a better work-life balance. However, it is also harder for employers to measure and monitor employees’ performance and for the employee it can...

The impact of healthy workplaces on employee satisfaction, productivity and costs

Purpose: This paper aims to explore the added value of healthy workplaces for employees and organizations, in particular regarding employee satisfaction, labour productivity and facility cost. Design/methodology/approach: The paper is based on a narrative review of journal papers and other sources covering the fields of building research,...

Biased technical change in hospital care and the demand for physicians

BACKGROUND: The development of labour productivity is relevant for accurately planning future staffing requirements, especially in sectors where technological developments may drive labour substitution. The present study investigates how labour productivity has developed across Dutch medical specialists (2007-2017) and discusses its...

Pandemic programming: How COVID-19 affects software developers and how their organizations can help

Context: As a novel coronavirus swept the world in early 2020, thousands of software developers began working from home. Many did so on short notice, under difficult and stressful conditions.<br/><br/>Objective: This study investigates the effects of the pandemic on developers’ wellbeing and productivity.<br/><br/>Method: A questionnaire survey...

Productivity as a value parameter for FM and CREM

Purpose: This paper aims to investigate how facilities management (FM) and corporate real estate management (CREM) can add value to organisations by contributing to improved productivity of knowledge workers, and to explore interrelationships between productivity, employee satisfaction and other value parameters. Design/methodology/approach:...

The impact of workplaces and self-management practices on the productivity of knowledge workers

Purpose: This paper aims to explore the impact of workplaces, which support concentration and communication, and self-management practices on individual and team productivity. The underlying hypothesis is that the impact of these variables on the two levels of productivity (individual and team) and the two dimensions of productivity (quantity...

How to build a good practice software project portfolio?

What can we learn from historic data that is collected in three software companies that on a daily basis had to cope with highly complex project portfolios? In this paper we analyze a large dataset, containing 352 finalized software engineering projects, with the goal to discover what factors affect software project performance, and what...

Productivity and employee satisfaction in flexible workplaces

In the early 1990s, a few organisations in the Netherlands began to experiment with flexible workplaces. Traditional cellular offices and the open‐plan offices or team‐oriented bullpen spaces in which everyone had their own fixed workplace were no longer a matter of course. Making use of modern information and communication technology, the...