Cure for the future: the real options approach in corporate real estate management. An exploratory study in Dutch health care

Health organizations face increasingly more and complex uncertainties which influences the provision of healthcare. Real estate facilitates this primary process and therefore has to change accordingly. Corporate Real Estate Management is the discipline that develops strategies that match the current and future demand and supply of real estate by the organization. A means to enable adaptation to uncertainties is flexibility. Real options thinking provides a way to create flexibility proactively. This dissertation explores how real options can be used in decisionmaking regarding strategic real estate management in healthcare. The relation between types of project coalitions and flexibility is investigated, the applicability of real options thinking in practice, and sensemaking of uncertainties and flexibility measures by means of a decision support tool with scenario planning and real options thinking.