High rise buildings are commonly found in Hong Kong. Neighbours are so close to one another that activity next door could bring disastrous effect to the whole building even if only minor malpractice is found in daily activities. There had been a number of fires with large number of casualties and deaths in the recent years. Fire safety management in buildings across Hong Kong has been one of the most discussed topics in the territory by the government, politicians and the general public. Investigations of those incidents revealed that there are common malpractices found in those buildings – ineffective means of escape routes, unauthorized alteration to building usage and structures and low awareness on fire safety management. The government did take remedial actions after each fire by imposing more requirements on fire services equipments and systems for types of buildings that had been burnt in previous fires. Furthermore, ad hoc fleet checks to buildings with similar characteristics as where the fires were had also been carried out to meet public concern right after blazes. Long term measures such as enactment of new laws, amendments to existing codes of practice on fire safety equipments and systems, strengthening execution of laws towards offenders, launch of promotional programmes by the Fire Services Department to raise public concern on fire safety awareness have been in effect aiming at lowering the figures on fire cases and hence loss in lives and properties. After series of actions taken, number of fire cases, casualties and deaths result from fire did not go down in the past few years. Building fire safety condition in two cities in South East Asia, Singapore and Tokyo, are taken for comparison with that of Hong Kong. It is discovered that there are merits from the two cities for our reference in order to get the safety levels of our buildings be raised. The two governments in Singapore and Tokyo take proactive approach on control and promotion of fire safety in buildings while our policies are passive ones. Besides, both Singaporean and Tokyo government plan their policies with focus on the weaknesses found that bring adverse effect to the key issue. In order to cultivate safe atmosphere for citizens in Hong Kong, the government is strongly recommended to adopt proactive approach that addresses the root cause of the issue. Compulsory appointment of independent Fire Safety Manager, adoption of total fire safety management concepts with focus on emergency planning and drills, incentive programmes to raise the public awareness on building fire safety are expected to strengthen the concepts of fire safety in the community. On the other hand, compulsory formation of owners’ corporations, legal review and amendments to current ordinance on building management in order to maintain equilibrium for management power among stakeholders, including building managers, of buildings and last but not least, putting legal liability on professional building managers for fire safety malpractices are suggested measures to address the root causes of the phenomena. / published_or_final_version / Housing Management / Master / Master of Housing Management

Statutory Minimum Wages was effective in Hong Kong on 1 May 2011. It is not a newly invented concept and actually many European and Asian countries have adopted the minimum wages policy for long. Since the implementation of the minimum wages, it has been a controversial topic in our Hong Kong society. Being the one works in the property management field, this dissertation aims to examine the implementation of the Statutory Minimum Wages among the property management companies in Hong Kong and to critically review and evaluate the costs and benefits of this policy on the property management companies. Many scholars and economists have taken efforts to study the impacts of implementing the Statutory Minimum Wages. By reviewing those studies it helps to understand the possible costs and benefits that the minimum wages policy could bring. However, most of the studies are focused on the impacts of the minimum wages policy to the personal or society, very rare that they would have studied on the impacts of the minimum wages on a specific industry. There are also no scholars and economists did a research on the impacts of the Statutory Minimum Wages on the property management industry. To understand the impacts of the Statutory Minimum Wages on property management companies in Hong Kong, both primary and secondary data research has been conducted in order to find out the answer. For the secondary data research, data are collected via various channels including government’s report, Census and Statistics Department, journals, books and newspapers etc. For the primary data research, both qualitative and quantitative method has been used. The quantitative questionnaire interview aims to interview the people working in the property management companies and see how the implementation of the minimum wages could have impact on them. There is also a qualitative face to face interview to the property managers so as to understand the impacts of the minimum wages policy to the property management companies. By gathering the information and analysis the data, this paper suggests that at the current stage the implementation of the Statutory Minimum Wages could bring more benefits than costs to the property management companies in Hong Kong. The overall living standard and living quality of the people working in the property management companies has been improved. Although the minimum wages would increase the company operation cost, it is suggested that the benefits generated could cover the cost increment in long run and it is worthy to continue the enactment of the minimum wages policy. Nevertheless, there is the recommendation that the future review of the minimum wages level should not be too aggressive. Prior any adjustment taken there should have a detail study on the market situation and the company affordability. Great changes at a time would be out of the affordability of the property management companies, which in turn would lead to the negative effect of close down of companies and trigger the layoff of employees. The policy should be review and adjust bit by bit so as to favor for the long term development of the property management companies in Hong Kong. / published_or_final_version / Housing Management / Master / Master of Housing Management

This study is to investigate the property management services towards safety condition of buildings in Hong Kong. Those property management services were found under a larger framework on property management industry brought by the housing managers including Building Repair & Maintenance, Management of Environment, Property Management Services for Owners / Tenants / Community, Facility Management, Law in Practice, Finance Management, Human Resources Management and other attributes of property management services. The results of the survey implied that the housing managers or practitioners of the property management industry realized those services would brought to the safety condition of the building in Hong Kong with significant impacts, but most of them would only put their focuses on the facility management or Building Repair & Maintenance. From the study, we could see there was raising concern on Finance Management and Law in Practice which was conformed to the past literature on safety condition of the buildings. This study also showed how the socio-demographic characteristics would affect the perceptions of the housing managers and the practitioners of the property management industry on the property management services. Much more of this study is to explain the importance of considering the point of views of the different property management services in affecting the safety condition of the buildings. To illustrated the relationship between the property management services and the safety condition of the buildings in order to understand how important of the property management services is in maintaining the safety condition of the buildings. / published_or_final_version / Housing Management / Master / Master of Housing Management

Environmental protection is a hot issue around in the world. Many governments and industries have put a lot of resources and efforts to take their responsibility of environmental protection in their daily operation and to establish correspondence environmental management system in their field. One of the international standards - ISO 14001 is a standard to assist to monitor and standardize the environmental management system in a company. Many studies have reported that implementation of ISO 14001 can provide different advantages to the company, such as improvement of image, improvement of environmental performance, improvement of efficiency of environmental policies, etc.. However, in the point of view of environmental protection, the most important is the actions of a person. Environmental protection should be done by everyone in the world, but not just in a company or an industry. If the implementation of ISO 14001 can affect a person to become more environmental friendly, it is worth to the environment. Nevertheless, there are few studies to investigate the effects and impacts of implementation of ISO 14001 to a person, especially in the property management industry. Therefore, in this paper, the impacts of implementation of ISO 14001 to the residents in the property management industry had been studies qualitatively. Three impacts, which are behaviors, awareness and knowledge of environmental protection, to the residents are investigated. The result found out that these are positively affected when ISO 14001 has been implemented in the properties. In conclusion, further research should be carried out to get an in-depth investigation as the sample size in this paper is limited and an absolute result cannot be got. However, the result is encouraging as implementation of ISO 14001 can positively affect the person living in the property and there are benefits to the environment due to their actions. / published_or_final_version / Housing Management / Master / Master of Housing Management

In Hong Kong, statutory minimum wage has been implemented for three years. Under the implementation of statutory minimum wage, the property management companies have to pay at least $30 to their staff per hour, it increases the staff cost of property management companies and reduces the profit of the companies. On theother hand, the property owners have to pay higher management fee due to the increase of staff cost, they expected that they should receive better quality of services. If the service standard of the property management companies could not match with owners' expectation, it would affect the customer satisfaction towards the service of the property management companies. As a result, it would increase the conflicts between the property owners and the property management companies and it might affect the relationship between each other. Indeed, the property management companies are facing high pressure on it now. Therefore, it is meaningful to study the impacts of minimum wage on the service quality of property management companies in Hong Kong. In this study, we try to investigate whether the implementation of minimum wage can improve the service quality of the properties management companies in Hong Kong and increase the satisfaction level of the employees and the customers. The scope of study will be focused on two different types of property management companies. One is a large-sized property management company (Company A) which is the subsidiary of large developer in Hong Kong. The other is a small to medium sized property management company (Company B) which is a non-subsidiary company. By doing this research, it could compare the service quality of different types of property management companies after the implementation of minimum wage. Two sets of questionnaires were sent out in order to collect the viewpoints from the staff of the property management companies and the owners/residents' of middle class residential properties. There were altogether 250 questionnaires were done, the results showed that both Company A and Company B were in the same direction. The results expressed that either internal customer (staff of the property management companies) or the external customer (owners/residents) of both companies did not think that the service quality of management office have significant improvement after the minimum wage. Based on the results of the research, we suggest some ways to improve the service quality of the service team and also give some recommendation to government in implementing the minimum wage policy so that it could benefit for people working in the property management field in Hong Kong. / published_or_final_version / Housing Management / Master / Master of Housing Management

In May 2011, it is a milestone for implementation of Statutory Minimum Ordinance in Hong Kong. In this dissertation, it can see that the changes in the field of property management after implementation of Statutory Minimum Wage Ordinance. The aim of implementation of Statutory Minimum Wage Ordinance to safeguard the interests of the vulnerable and grassroots workers. However, it found that it is very difficult to recruit frontline security staff than before. Hence, questionnaire and interview were conducted for analysis the existing working and living condition of frontline security staff and managerial grade staff. It can get more details what are the problems after implementation of Statutory Minimum Wage Ordinance. Moreover, some recommendations and suggestions are given for review of Statutory Minimum Wage Ordinance. In this project, it was found that frontline security staff get their job easier than before and the majority of their hourly wage rate at between $30.1 and $33. The frontline security staff also consider to get their job not only hourly wage but also the other fringe benefits what the property management company can provide. On the other hand, the managerial grade staff felt that their workload were increased and they also disagree the benefits could outweigh disadvantages after implementation of Statutory Minimum Wage Ordinance. Furthermore, management fee were increased inevitably which affected by the implementation of Statutory Minimum Wage Ordinance. It was known that the Statutory Minimum Wage rate was applied to all industries which set up in one rate. It is time for review the policy that set up a different minimum wage rate for different kind of industries. Recently, a referendum was conducted in Switzerland by resolution of implementing the Statutory Minimum Wage Ordinance on 18 May 2014, and it was rejected by majority. They concern that implementing the Statutory Minimum Wage Ordinance not only to weaken the productivity and competitiveness for each industry but also implementation of Statutory Minimum Wage Ordinance cannot be improved the quality of living condition. To improve the quality of living condition for grassroots workers, working hard is the best solution. We may put this case of Switzerland in to Hong Kong for reference and we may also make our own choice by a referendum for resolution of implementation of Statutory Minimum Wage Ordinance. / published_or_final_version / Housing Management / Master / Master of Housing Management

published_or_final_version / Housing Management / Master / Master of Housing Management

published_or_final_version / Housing Management / Master / Master of Housing Management

published_or_final_version / Housing Management / Master / Master of Housing Management

published_or_final_version / Housing Management / Master / Master of Housing Management