Towards an International Event Management Body of Knowledge (EMBOK)

A lack of research into human resource development, managerial skillsets, and leadership practices of event managers has resulted in widespread assumptions about the nature of leadership within events, which is unsupported by primary research. This qualitative research based on semistructured interviews focused on event managers working within the business events industry. Data analysis using thematic analysis and a ranking list establishes six key leadership practices—engaging communication, strategic perspectives, critical analysis and judgement, resource management, emotional resilience, and interpersonal sensitivity. This research argues that these leadership practices are essential for the development of successful event managers. Additionally, this study shows there is tension at the heart of leadership within events—event projects are intangible and temporary in nature, providing only one opportunity to get it right and this results in event managers attempting to control all aspects of the event delivery. However, in order to be successful leaders, they also need to work in teams, motivate and empower others, and develop team members. This then is the challenge for human resource development in event management: How do event managers resolve this tension in order to become successful leaders?

Section: Event Management Research Into Competencies Knowledge and mentioning

confidence: 99%

How Event Managers Lead: Applying Competency School Theory to Event Management

Abson¹

2017

“…Equally, the level of understanding and management of risk varies between practitioners (Reid & Ritchie, 2011). Like all professions there is a recognition that a knowledge base is essential to achieving this, and the EMBOK (Event Management Body of Knowledge) framework seeks to identify useful knowledge domains (Silvers, Bowdin, O'Toole, & Nelson, 2006). Any knowledge domains, though, only become effective if they act as a framework for understanding and creating knowledge.…”

Section: Concept Of Experiencementioning

confidence: 99%

The Gran Fondo and Sportive Experience: an Exploratory Look at Cyclists' Experiences and Professional Event Staging

Berridge¹

2014

There has recently been a significant upsurge in popularity in cycling with not only increased participation evident but also new participants taking up cycling, especially in the UK, parts of Europe, US, and Australia. The branch of cycling that has witnessed the largest growth, in both numbers of events and participants, is the “gran fondo” or “sportive” cycle event. However, very little is known about either the organization of these events or the cultural experiences of cyclists participating in them. The focus of this article is to provide an exploratory narrative of the characteristics of a gran fondo or sportive, explored via a participant observation approach and interpreted through the use of experience theory. Drawing upon the exploratory stage of a larger “experiential ethnography” of cyclists at these types of events, the article presents observation findings from 12 event days to identify key characteristics of these events as experienced by participants. These are understood and contextualized within a discussion around the nature and concept of event experiences and related to the need for professional event organizers to identify experience components by applying models of experience within a management framework

“…In particular, several "event management authors" have emphasized the need for more formal approaches to event planning (Moscardo, 2007). In particular Silvers, Bowdin, O'Toole, and Nelson (2006) show how we need project management tools specific to event management.…”

Section: Managerial Implications Of Mega-eventsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Controlling the Delivering of Projects in Mega-Events: An Application on Expo 2015

Locatelli¹,

Mancini²

2014

among the mega-events is the necessity of delivering a large number of projects from different sectors (e.g., buildings, communication plans, ICT, infrastructure, etc.) The preparation of mega-events like Olympic Games, music festivals, or world expositions requires the successful and timely delivering of many correlated projects: buildings, ICT infrastructure, marketing projects, etc. The international market is increasingly characterized by large and mega-events. The size of these events escalates the complexity of management, often causing budget overruns and scope reduction. As a consequence it is fundamental to effectively monitor the progress of the entire program to react in case the progress does not follow the expected baseline. Project-controlling methodologies are well analyzed in the literature with respect to individual projects. For that which concerns the overall delivery of correlated projects (i.e., a program) the literature provides strategic and operational guidelines; however, far too little attention has been paid to developing quantitative methodology to control their execution phase. The purpose of this article is to review recent research into event planning and program management to propose a quantitative approach, based on the Petri nets and dynamic systems, to obtain the project envelope, a fundamental tool to assess and manage the progress of a program. The methodology is implemented on a real case study: EXPO 2015.