Practical Implications and Recommendations for Event Organisers
Throughout this book a number of practical implications and recommendations for event organisers have been mentioned and outlined. This chapter aims to bring them all together in relation to some of the challenges faced by event organisations specifically, as covered in Chapter 2. It is worth remembering though, that any knowledge management initiative in any kind of organisation is not just down to top management and their aims and objectives. Debowski (2006: 337) nicely summarised the four key knowledge management principles as follows: - Knowledge management is everyone’s business; - Knowledge practices are legitimate core business; - Communication is essential; and - High performance should be encouraged. While the recommendations presented throughout this chapter are largely aimed at event managers, they need to be incorporated with all employees in mind; permanent and seasonal staff members, volunteers, as well as contractors, suppliers, local businesses and other stakeholders. An event organisation can only learn as a whole over time by effectively bringing together knowledge and expertise from as many different sources as possible. Furthermore, effective knowledge management, and a more explicit understanding of it, will enhance professionalisation across the events industry and will make event professionals more employable in the future (Stadler et al., 2014). The book has also highlighted that there is still a need for further research into knowledge management in event organisations. In the final section of this chapter, suggestions for future research will hence be presented. This could be in the form of student research projects, dissertations (undergraduate or postgraduate), as well as consultancy work or other types of applied research.