In today's world of turbulence and repeated economic crisis, firms, as well as industries, face new challenges and opportunities. This complexity req uires thinking in a systemic way of the whole system, rather than looking at few parts of the system. Countries and regions that are too costly for doing business with a little focus on competitiveness and innovation throughout the entire legislative process are losing global leadership and ground towards main competitors. The industry that is being studied here, real estate, represents 70% of global wealth and touches everyone's life being an investor/owner or tenant. Multi-stakeholder's centered sustainable competitiveness this industry is advocated as current traditional business centered competitiveness may not work anymore.
Few studies touched on real estate industry level competitiveness apart from the application of Porter's diamond model. Not only that but these competitiveness models focused mainly on economic performance. With the introduction of Sustainable Development Goals, new thinking about competitiveness of this industry is becoming more important. In light of the above complexity and dynamism of the world, there is a need to have a new thinking about real estate industry's competitiveness beyond business centered economic definition to more of inclusive multi-stakeholder approach. Thus the research aims at reaching a comprehensive multi-stakeholder's definition while developing a dynamic framework of Real estate industry level competitiveness
The methodology presented here seeks to uncover and understand stakeholders’ expectations and needs in real estate industry competitiveness, which aligns with the research question: How does a more stakeholder-oriented understanding of real estate industry competitiveness look like?. We study real estate competitiveness from different perspectives, looking to shared experiences of multiple stakeholders. In particular, we look at experiences of stakeholders who have experienced aspects of (un)sustainable real estate competitiveness, to find common themes in these experiences. Thus, phenomenological qualitative research design was chosen as our main paradigm. To select interviewees, the different industry stakeholder groups were clustered (i.e. developers, tenants, investors, policy-makers, consultants, and brokers) and interviewees were chosen to represent these groups. The city of application is chosen to be Dubai given its nature as a booming cosmopolitan city that attracted more than many international investors and witnessed a booming real estate market.
By analyzing different stakeholders responses about challenges, opportunities, and the future of the real estate industry, the following key areas stand out as key determinants of real estate industry’s inclusive competitiveness: Real estate cost and quality tradeoff, Economic sustainability, Environmental sustainability, government and legal certainty, Political sustainability, Resilience and Social sustainability. These determinants can be clustered into three major pillars which are : Economic sustainability ; Central government role Beyond economic sustainability (social and environmental sustainability) .
The research findings confirm the importance of dealing with real estate industry as a system with interconnected parts. On one side, quality and affordability are central determinants of real estate industry's competitiveness which is in line with traditional competitiveness theories. However, by following a stakeholder focused approach , new themes such as sustainability, system thinking and central government role come to play important role in driving competitiveness. Different stakeholders look beyond economic value of buildings to the total offerings of the neighborhood and city ; beyond economic to social and environmental pillars of sustainability. Moreover, government's role is believed to be central to enhance real estate industry's competitiveness that goes from providing an enabling legal environment to employing better proactive tools to manage the real estate industry. Although different stakeholders have conflicting interests concerning expectations and priorities, common ground can be reached based on creating a sustainable real estate industry. Cities' success in creating a competitive real estate market depends on their ability to build quality of life infrastructure that attracts people, while offering sustainable economic opportunities without compromising on social and environmental performance.
To conclude, the proposed model can help governments in understanding city's competitive advantages by applying a multi-stakeholder approach to understand determinants of real estate industry level competitiveness and thus to enhance it.