Financial Planning and Budgeting of Events

The importance of financial management and resource allocation for events cannot be understated. Events are an important part of cities’, regions’ and countries’ cultural make-up and represent more than simply entertainment for interested consumers. Given this importance it is imperative that their ability to operate on a regular and ongoing basis is supported by a strong financial awareness of their management teams. How will we price the event to ensure that our objectives are met? How can we ensure that the management team and staff stay on-time and on-budget? How can we determine if we are generating enough revenue from our event to cover costs, and how important is our cash-on-hand for our immediate survival. This chapter aims to provide event managers with a clear understanding of these finance-related questions. The topics presented in this chapter build on, and extend the scope of the concepts discussed in the previous chapter. More emphasis will be on the numerical aspects as illustrated in the examples used throughout this chapter.

Adaptive and Sustainable Leadership for Event Management

Event Management, as a field of study, is relatively nascent. Attempts have been made by some scholars to define a workable framework that includes collaboration from different knowledge disciplines or industry services (Getz, 2000). However, as with many other fields of study, research reacts to the phenomena happening in the outside world, and attempts to find the right solution to standardize individuals’ and organisations’ practice. While we understand the gap between academia and practice, where the latter is always advancing due to actual needs on the ground, we also believe that adopting a proactive approach in research to provide the right solutions and run proper training programs, can help to bridge this gap and provide real value to practice.

Virtual Team Performance and Wellbeing for Event Management

This chapter falls in two parts. Part 1 discusses team issues with emphasis on virtual teams. The first few sections briefly compare and contrast the different types of team and how team performance should be planned and managed, in line with set goals and detailed deliverables. This will cover a wide range of concepts that come into play under performance management and measurement. The following sections focus on the challenges that virtual teams face amid the prevailing digital transformation and suggest effective measures to address those challenges. The presented concepts are generic, thus can be readily applied to the context of event management. Part 2 comprises two sections; the first discusses well-being and cross-cultural variations in relation to event management, while the second section is focused on the role of social psychology in devising event experiences.

Event Management A sustainable project management perspective

The Events Management sector has been a new fast-growing trend that links tourism, business, and leisure together (Getz, 1997). Traditionally, all events were mainly focused on financial benefits. However, the recent trend reflects a broader vision based on sustainable (social, cultural, envi- ronmental and economic) issues. The term ‘Green Events’ became a new trend in events; usually sponsored and organized by local authorities that try to educate visitors and the local community towards more sustainable behaviours through the integration of sustainable tools during the plan- ning, organisation, and management processes to reduce potential adverse effects resulting from the limited focus on the financial objectives.

Sustainable Business Model Innovation for Event Management

Indeed, the COVID-19 pandemic has seriously impacted many businesses with irredeemable consequences, while the rest are trying to keep rowing, believing that making business as usual will save them. Only a few embarked on what academics call the innovation of business models. And they are doing it at the speed of light because the world they knew is no longer the same. The event management domain is not different. There is an urgent need to consider the impact of the emerging trends and the unexpected turbulence on the event industry, in general, and event management in particular. There is a common consensus that business model innovation can provide an effective path towards acquiring competitive advantage. Still, event management practice seems to be facing real challenges connecting related concepts like eco-innovation, stakeholder engagement, long-term sustain- ability (based on the triple bottom line) and impact of public and private governance from both the supply and demand sides. In short, there are very few examples in the industry that connect eco-innovation and the ways organisations create, deliver and capture value (the value cycle), and avoid leaving value uncaptured (Yang et al., 2017). The few examples of the value cycle connected to eco-innovation – i.e., connecting business models and sustainable innovation – concentrate on properly integrating the eco-innovated products, services, processes with working business models. The sort of linear thinking that advocates pursuing the sustainability of a business model by just producing greener or environmentally-conscious services seldom considers eco-innovation of business models as driven by valueholders’ needs and interests. This chapter will discuss how business models in the event industry, while aiming to achieve the sustainability goals, balancing economic, social and environmental needs and requirements for better or greener products and extended value proposals, should realise that these are imposed by the valueholders affecting their value creation, delivery and capture cycle. The chapter starts with an introduction, explaining the relevant basic concepts of business models (BM), business model innovation (BMI) and sustainable business models (SBM) while linking to the concept of eco-innovation. The remaining sections explicate the concept of valueholder from a SBM perspective and its impact on the development and implementation of the SBM. The discussion starts by looking at how the concept of (institutional) logic can help to implement business model eco-innovation, with emphasis on the behavioural aspects that influence the decisions made, which determine the effectiveness of the BM.

Digital Transformation in the Event Industry

Digital transformation (DT) is becoming an important topic for organisations and industries around the world (Kaufman & Horton, 2015; Von Leipzig et al., 2017). It is anticipated that some organisations will be unable to adapt easily to the new digital era, and executives are struggling to understand how digital transformation affects their organisations. Digital transformation is not only about investing in digital technology but refers to how organisations restructure themselves to adapt and shift organisational culture to enable developments that exploit technology and bring their businesses to new growth rates. Digital transformation has also appeared in the event industry, presenting digital solutions to optimise the event management process. The basic idea of the digital transformation comes from the blending of personal and corporate information environments and integrates the transformative effect of new digital technologies such as social, mobile, analytics, cloud and the Internet of Things (Kane et al., 2015.). A broad definition describes it as the integration of digital technologies and business processes into a digital economy (Liu et al., 2011). A similarly broad view holds that the use of technology can radically improve a business’s performance or impact (Westerman et al., 2014a).

Sustainability in the Context of Event Management

Enormous numbers of different type of events are taking place all around the world, impacting the environment and consuming a wider range of resources. For most businesses and organisations, the impact their activities have on the environment and sustainability is becoming a key factor input when planning and organizing events of all kinds. Festivals and events, in general, are important components of the tour- ism industry. With worldwide growth of festivals and events and global tourism set to reach 1.6 billion arrivals by in the near future, it is important to develop planning tools to facilitate the roll out of sustainably man- aged events. Festivals and events create significant impacts both positive and negative on the environment, society, and the economy. Therefore, sustainable event management is gaining attraction and is, in many cases, demanded as it provides an opportunity to manage these impacts while improving the quality of events.

Traditional Event Project Management

After the general introduction to the concept of sustainability in the con- text of event management, this chapter aims to discuss the tools and techniques event managers can utilize to manage events. This starts with the traditional project management methodology as provided in the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBoK) then, in the next chapter, com- pares it with the more recent Agile methodology.

Sustainable Financial Planning for Event Management

Events are highly resource intensive, and can have negative environmental consequences such as waste of water, energy and materials. Sustainable finance is critically important to ensure sustainable development by making responsible decisions during the planning, organisation and implementation of an event. Events should be hosted in an environmentally, socially and economically responsible way. Many international companies are making sustainable events an integral part of their tender process. Greening any event should reduce the negative environmental impact, but should also leave a positive and lasting legacy for the local community.

Risk Management and Agile Project Management

The previous chapter explicated the components of the project plan from the traditional project management (TPM) standpoint. In this chapter we explore the risk management system while linking this to the concept of Agile in managing projects. The rationale rests on the bedrock of project success which is directly proportional to the effectiveness of the risk man- agement system. The higher the uncertainty about the event scope, the more likely the management team will face a real challenge trying to develop an effective risk management system following the TPM approach. The first part of this chapter explicates the main components of the risk management system from TPM perspective. The basic concepts of Agile Project Manage- ment (APM) are then presented and discussed in the context of event man- agement. The chapter wraps up with some useful projections justifying the claims that APM tools and techniques can be utilized to proactively manage risk in the context of event thus enhancing the overall success of the event.