Facilities @ Management

3.4 Facility Management Yesterday – Today – Tomorrow

Klaus Zapotoczky

Ever since my high school and university years, I was connected to the world of work and all related aspects as a working student, and familiar with facilities of all kinds. After having finished my studies in law and mathematics at the University of Vienna as a Doctor of Law, I decided after having completed the compulsory period as a legal trainee at the district court of Vienna, to broaden my view of actual life and work in society, by complementing my study with social and economic sciences at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium. The Licentiate there, with my thesis about “The question of the meaning of work”¹ was subsequently my start in sociology and research in academia.

Finally, as Professor at the Johannes Kepler University Linz (JKU), Austria, I was asked in the late 1980s by colleagues of the business administration department to accompany research projects in the fields of Management Consulting and Mergers and Acquisitions. All areas with particular sociological relevance to working people in systems determined not only by professional work practice but also by the place in which performed, overwhelmingly in facilities of the built environment. I gladly accepted, as the research approach appealed to me, which also included the co-supervision of dissertations from mainly specialists of varied areas, companies of all sizes and types. The results and findings of these cases and field studies ...