AN INSTITUTIONAL PERSPECTIVE ON ADOPTING SMART BUILDING CONCEPT: IDENTIFYING AND OVERCOMING BARRIERS

Abstract

“Smart” buildings has been a prevailing trend in many technologically-equipped cities and countries around the world. They are often being utilised as a solution to manage energy consumption while maintaining a high level of indoor comfort for the occupants. The “smart” trend has eventually hit Singapore as the Government launched the Smart Nation Initiative in 2014. The Initiative aims to leverage technology to improve quality of living and business competency. As Singapore has always been believing in technology as the key enabler of growth, many ICT masterplans have been implemented to create a stable IT foundation for future development. Despite the maturing digital landscape in Singapore, the development and adoption of “smart” buildings remain in its infant stage with the low adoption of smart technologies. This eventually hampers the transformation of normal buildings into “smart” buildings. Institutional Theory has thus been deployed to understand the phenomenon of partial adoption of the concept. Utilising the 3 pillars of Institutional Theory (coercive, mimetic and normative isomorphism), external factors that impact on organisational and managerial decisions, which also act as the barriers to “smart” adoption, are identified. With the aids of interviews, professional opinions are gathered from industry players to analyse the industry’s attitude towards “smart” adoption. The findings is later used to study the adoption of “smart” building concept in Singapore and the barriers hampering the progress.