Dancing in a Winter Wonderland Managing Stakeholders Case Study

Dancing in a Winter Wonderland Managing Stakeholders - Case Study Example There are different theoretical approaches to stakeholder management in an organizational context. They are; agency theory, transaction cost economics, competitive theory, institutional theory, stakeholder theory, and network theory. In the context of event management, it is worth considering the stakeholder theory and the network theory. The stakeholder approach deals basically with groups or individuals who can affect the performance of an organization and whose interests are taken care of by the management (Freeman, 1984; Frooman 1999) Power, legitimacy and urgency are identified as the basic attributes of stakeholders (Mitchell et al 1997) The network approach talks about the positions of different actors created by the links among them. (Thorelli, 1986) A different kind of social relationship among actors is assumed in the network analysis (Galakiewicz, 1996) Thus actors, activities and resources are the basic concepts in a network (Johanson and Associates 1994) The actors in th e network own and control resources and carry out activities by combining resources (Sharma, 1993) While stakeholder theory is mainly static the network theory deals with the dynamic process involved in changing the network. Thus event management encompasses the basic elements of both of these theoretical approaches. Therefore it becomes important that the event is conducted skillfully so that it becomes valuable to all the stakeholders. One of the most cited reasons for the failure of any event is the lack of resources. Lack of resources can be identified by the inability of the event management to attract more sponsors and donors. Thus the success of the events depends largely on the support from stakeholders. This adds to the proposition that the event managers should manage the relationship with the stakeholders more efficiently. The literature on event management has established the relationships between the management of events and the stakeholders (e.g. Getz, 1997; Watt 1998; Long, 2000; Lvendahl, 2000) However it needs to be mentioned that there is no documented evidence of the application of the stakeholder theory in the event management contexts (Reid & Acordia 2002)