The Way Forward - Helping Hand or Grabbing Hand Owners' Corporations to Prevail in Hong Kong?   

扶持之手,或是掠奪之手?有關香港業主立案法團之研究

Student thesis: Doctoral Thesis

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Supervisors/Advisors
Award date6 May 2024

Abstract

The growth of common interest multi-storey buildings (MSBs) accompanies complicated management and maintenance (M&M) problems. To tackle the tangled owner-management relationships of MSBs, it is a global trend to encourage owners to self-manage MSBs by forming owners’ corporations (OCs) and outsourcing management routines to property management professionals (PMPs), despite the limitations of OCs’ operation and PMPs’ service. Then, what are the ways to facilitate OCs’ smooth operation and enhance OCs’ performance?

Agency and cost perspectives dominate the studies on owner-management relationships and residents’ associated organizations. Given the agency and cost issues, researchers and practitioners encourage forming OCs, licensing PMPs, appointing property management companies, and regulating the operation of OCs. Nevertheless, owner-owner conflicts, owners-PMPs disputes, and problems of incomplete contracts and M&M remain. Despite board governance’s importance in influencing corporations’ performance, the performance-influencing factor of OC’s board governance style has received scant attention. Besides, government policies impact OCs’ management and operation. Some owners call for intensive government interventions. However, some researchers and practitioners promote OCs’ self-governance. Like the performance-influencing factor of OC’s governance, owner-expected officials’ roles in contributing to OCs’ performance in M&M have also not been examined. There remain instant and essential knowledge gaps in the governance patterns leading to OCs’ better performance and owner-expected officials’ roles in contributing to OCs’ performance.

The mainstream agency and cost perspectives are unsuitable for exploring OCs’ governance styles and owner-expected government support. Based on a Hong Kong case study, I rethink the owner-management relationships in OCs through integrated helping hand (HH) and grabbing hand (GH) perspectives from the lens of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis and Fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis to explore the uncharted territories of OCs’ governance styles and owner-expected officials’ roles in contributing to OCs’ better performance.

This thesis argues that OCs with HH governance patterns at the management and operational levels tend to perform better. Furthermore, government officials sharing information, knowledge, and experience helps improve OCs’ performance. Moreover, this paper suggests that the policy ahead should promote HH OCs and discourage GH ones. Also, it is recommended to enhance officials’ information-sharing roles and governmental provision of sharing platforms for owners.

    Research areas

  • Owners’ Corporations, Property management, performance, helping hand, grabbing hand, government interventions, fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis, interpretative phenomenological analysis