Int. J. Sustainable Real Estate and Construction Economics, Vol. 1, No. 1, 2017 77 Copyright © 2017 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd. Excellence board of public housing in the Netherlands through a coherent set of values Jan Veuger NoorderRuimte, Centre of Research and Innovation for Build Environment, Hanze University of Applied Sciences Groningen, Groningen, Netherlands Email: j.veuger@pl.hanze.nl Abstract: Housing associations make too small a contribution to society, the government has to step in too frequently because of maladministration, and the associations’ executives are often unaware of the far-reaching impact of their decisions. These are the conclusions of new academic research conducted by Jan Veuger of Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University (RSM). In his dissertation, he asserts that in numerous cases there is no correlation between social and financial objectives. After extensive exploration of the literature and PhD studies the research design inspired based on the grounded theory, which has a certain bias as a result of the extensive literature study. My contribution to science is also showing patterns of board behaviour, whether or not in conjunction with societal and financial values of housing associations. This contribution complements studies on culture of housing associations (Dreimüller, 2008; Sinke, 2014) or only driver behavior (Heemskerk, 2013) or history of housing corporations (Beekers, 2012) or about the behaviour of housing associations (Koolma, 2009). Keywords: housing associations; corporate real estate management; CREM; board-Netherlands. Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Veuger, J. (2017) ‘Excellence board of public housing in the Netherlands through a coherent set of values’, Int. J. Sustainable Real Estate and Construction Economics, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp.77–88. Biographical notes: Jan Veuger’s common thread in the curriculum vitae is strategic management of (social) property in the business and social housing (1966). He completed his Master of Real Estate (MRE) in 2006 on a study on governance of social housing and consistency of quality instruments and promoted in 2014 at the RSM Erasmus University Rotterdam. He is thereby distinguished as the best student. He is the Owner/Director of Corporate © Real Estate Management, Professor of Public Real Estate at Hanze University of Applied Sciences Groningen. 1 Introduction This qualitative research for control and measurement of housing corporations has a dual purpose. Firstly, to understand the significance of housing associations in the society. In addition, to expose patterns in how they function. The central question that ultimately