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Introduction
Event management has developed into a fast-growing field of studies in universities around the world, and festival management is emerging as a distinct sub-field. Festivals are universal and occupy a special place in society and culture, and their management presents a number of unique challenges. All researchers conducting festival management studies can benefit from a framework that defines the scope of their field. In addition, those conducting comparative or cross-cultural studies face another fundamental problem - that of developing a theoretically sound, comprehensive, systematic, and workable framework for deciding what to compare and how to meaningfully assess the findings. The wider the expected differences, such as those between festival types or within different settings and cultures, the more important it becomes to develop a dynamic and widely adaptable framework. It should also encourage both theoretical advances and the expansion of practical knowledge for managers.
In this paper, we first examine the nature and scope of festival management studies by demonstrating what is special and challenging about festival management, followed by a short discussion of the need for, and difficulties in undertaking comparative and cross-cultural studies. Existing conceptual models and several reviews of festival and event-related literature are then summarized in order to establish the current state of art.
Most of the paper is devoted to an analysis of similarities and differences revealed in a four-country comparison of festival management. It documents statistically significant differences by ownership (public, not-for-profit, and private) and country (UK, Norway, Sweden, and Australia). Although results of this exploratory comparative study are not generalizeable, it is important to show what can be gained by comparative studies both for theoretical advances and for practical management applications.
Following the four-country analysis, a five-component framework is proposed, covering the festival experience and meanings, antecedents and choices, planning and management, outcomes and the impacted, and dynamic patterns and process. For each component major topics and themes are listed, and a number of research priorities suggested. In the Conclusions there is an elaboration of how progress can be made in the field of festival management studies through various ways to employ the framework.
The nature and scope of festival management studies
Festivals have been defined by [7] Falassi (1987, p. 2), in the classical cultural-anthropological...