Professor Emeritus in the Practice of Finance Emory University, Goizueta Business School
Prof. Black is a Professor in the Practice of Finance and Director of the Real Estate Program at Goizueta Business School.
Emory University, Goizueta Business School
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PhD
Business Administration
1991
Finance, real estate
Master's
Real Estate
1986
JD
Law
1974
BA
English
1969
Specialization: Theater Arts (Film)
2006
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore how a firm can incorporate real estate strategy with its core strategy, using the workspace to support its human resource objectives. The intent is to examine how important the quality of the workplace is to employees and the resulting impact it can have on productivity, loyalty, satisfaction, and retention in a knowledge industry.
Design/Methodology/Approach
The study uses a survey to gather data on employee opinions about the importance and quality of workplace features. Responses are compared for statically significant differences using ANOVA among groups of employees to determine if opinions differ by sex, position in the firm, and location among newer and older facilities. The results are evaluated in the context of the firm's core strategy and objectives.
Findings
The results indicate that employees at Alston & Bird, LLC, the law firm studied, are satisfied with the overall quality of their workspace. However, differences exist between workers in different positions and among locations. The firm's most valuable workers, the attorneys, appear to be most satisfied. Specialized spaces (day care center, dining room), carry more importance among employee groups the firm especially wants to recruit and retain.
Originality/Value
The paper illustrates how workspace initiatives as part of a corporate real estate strategy can support a knowledge firm's core strategy and objectives. It demonstrates how a firm can link corporate and real estate strategies to boost productivity, employee loyalty, employee satisfaction and retention.
2004
Firms outsource business functions to focus on core competencies and cut operating expenses. However, companies must consider agency costs in determining the optimal staffing/outsourcing balance. Analysis of the views of corporate real estate managers and real estate service providers indicate that although they share a common vision of the role of corporate real estate, providers focus more on traditional real estate tasks than on corporate business strategy. The optimum balance of staffing/outsourcing may consist of a corporate real estate staff that understands the overall corporate strategy and devotes its resources to strategic planning, program development, contracting, and monitoring outsourced tasks.
1997
Builds on a previous study and examines the influence of asking prices as anchors in the real property negotiating process. Previous studies have shown that the human mind uses short cuts (heuristics) in process information. Describes a study which gives further evidence that negotiators familiar with real property will, in many cases, devalue cognitively difficult pricing information and base their negotiation expectations on the seller’s asking price. Concludes that the seller’s asking price is thus a potential source of bias.
1996
An understanding of how thirty real estate journals are perceived for promotion and tenure and for professional applicability was sought by surveying members of the two most important real estate academic organizations. Several subgroup comparisons were made revealing some common perceptions but a significant amount of disagreement as well. Among findings robust across the surveyed community were that the Journal of the American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association (changed to Real Estate Economics in 1995) is the most important outlet for promotion and tenure and the Appraisal Journal is the most important outlet for professional applicability. Two distinct journal groupings emerged: an academic group composed of eight journals and a professional group of twenty.
1996
This paper examines the use of asking price in the real property negotiation process and whether it can potentially bias results. Theoretical work on the limited processing capacity of the human mind suggests the research hypothesis that negotiators will devalue difficultly processed critical information in favour of cognitive shortcuts (called heuristics) such as asking price. The analysis of data gathered through a series of experiments revealed that the manipulation of asking price led to the manipulation of both buyer opening offer and eventual settlement prices, thus indicating the use of asking price as a shortcut and its strong potential as an agent for bias.
1 min
Thursday Atlanta appeared on the shortlist for Amazon's second corporate headquarters. What would that mean for the city? Two Goizueta experts break down the finance and the real estate angles. Source:
Georgia Public Broadcasting online
2021-08-10
The reason for the skyrocketing prices is because of the overwhelming demand for houses in the state and across the country, according to Roy Black, a finance professor at Emory University’s business school. “We’ve got a classic supply and demand imbalance,” Black said. “There was very little construction during COVID, so there’s a lot of houses that didn’t get built that should have gotten built. We don’t have the adequate supply to meet the current demand.”
11Alive online
2021-05-10
It began over a decade ago during the Great Recession when home building ground to a halt. “There was three or four years when there was very little building going on,” says Roy Black of Emory’s Goizueta Business School. “So we missed adding to the stock of houses at that point.” Building slowed again during the pandemic further limiting the supply as millennials enter the housing market.
Atlanta Magazine online
2021-04-21
“The Atlanta market is kind of like the old joke about averages: To the man who has his head in a refrigerator and his rear-end in an oven—on average, it’s room temperature,” says Emory University finance professor Roy Black, director of Goizueta Business School’s real-estate program. “The real estate’s generally doing well in areas where the money flows.” Black grades Atlanta’s recovery as a B+, so far.
