A Sustainable Facility Management Outsourcing Relationships System: Artificial Neural Networks

Ka Leung Lok, Albert So, Alex Opoku and Charles Chen
Additional contact information
Ka Leung Lok: National Research Base of Intelligent Manufacturing Service, Chongqing Technology and Business University, Chongqing 400067, China
Albert So: Asian Institute of Built Environment, Hong Kong, China
Alex Opoku: Bartlett School of Construction and Project Management, University College London, London WC1E 6BT, UK
Charles Chen: College of Business and Information Technology, University of Phoenix, Hawaii, HI 96707, USA

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 9, 1-28

Abstract: The Contingency Outsourcing Relationship (CORE) model originated from the Four Outsourcing Relationship Types (FORT) model; the CORE model is used in the globalized Facility Management (FM) industry, while the FORT model is originally used in the global information technology industry. The purpose of this paper is to thoroughly analyse the simulated case studies of the four different categories (i.e., in-house, technical expertise, commitment and common goals) of the CORE model from the perspective of the various clients. This study builds on the previous work on the outsourcing relationships between a client and a globalized FM service provider. It further explores the application of this model with the aid of artificial neural networks (ANNs) towards a sustainable future. A quantitative methodology through a survey is used to analyse eight outsourcing strategies for the four outsourcing relationships. A set of revised rules of the CORE is introduced and discussed regarding the approaches to investigate the four simulated outsourcing relationship systems. The study further reveals that an interesting understanding of the four outsourcing categories can be systematically and efficiently implemented into the FM outsourcing relationships through the methodology of scientific Artificial Intelligence (AI). It is concluded that FM outsourcing categorization may help to define the appropriate relationships. This further detailed outcome generated from the ANN can be clearly considered a strong and solid reference to define and explain the existing outsourcing relationships between the stakeholders and the service providers with the aim to assign an outsourcing category to the FM relationship between the client and service provider based on the learnt rules.

Keywords: artificial neural networks; facilities management outsourcing relationships system; facilities management strategies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/9/4740/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/9/4740/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:9:p:4740-:d:541981

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().