Strategic Sustainability Management in the Event Sector

Abstract

Although the Triple Bottom Line approach has underpinned significant progress in our knowledge of sustainability in the event sector, scholars have recently criticized this approach for its overemphasis on reporting outcomes and have called for a new conceptualization that accounts for strategic inputs in order to maintain progress towards greater sustainability knowledge and performance. This research utilizes a widely-accepted strategic framework, the Resource-Based View of the Firm, as a lens to gain insight into the inputs of strategic sustainability management in the events sector. Therefore, the research question to be addressed is: What resources and capabilities are associated with best-practice strategic sustainability management in the event sector? In order to address this question, a qualitative content analysis of the websites of 10 international music events that have achieved best-practice sustainability accreditation from the Greener Festival Awards organization was conducted. Analysis of the data detected 11 resources and inferred 14 capabilities associated with best-practice strategic sustainability management in the event sector. The data also demonstrated the interrelationships that exist between the sample events' resource deployment and suggests that reputational capital plays a key role (both as a desirable outcome of, but also a critical resource input into) in best-practice sustainability management. Lastly, this article concludes with a range of research opportunities going forward relating to sustainability management in the event sector.