Identifying and managing risk in organizing cultural events (In the case study of the Romanian music festivals)

Abstract

Cultural management is mainly focused on the establishment of efficient organizational solutions or models that contribute to the growth of added values in market economy and to the increase of investment and competitiveness attractiveness of an area. Correspondingly, cultural events can stimulate the development of local communities, improve their image and attract additional investments. Due to this fact and because of a widely applied subject of the cultural management the interest to the publications in the branch has recently increased. The purpose of the study is to reveal main risks in the organization of cultural events to improve the quality of their organization process. The novelty of the investigation concerns the justification of the criteria for organizational risks of cultural events and the definition of factors of management effect that will contribute to high quality of cultural event organization. Five parameters have been determined as the criteria for organizational risk in the research. They are types of risk; factors that may influence the organization of a cultural event; the relationship between the types of risk and the quality of the organization of cultural events; measures, that can be taken to neutralize potential risks; the effectiveness of management measures, that influence the identified risks. The research is based on the expert survey of organizers, administrative staff, volunteers and artists who participated in two festivals. The festivals are similar in aims and features of holding as they both promote Romanian music – Cluj Modern and Trio Transilvan. The research includes economic and statistical methods applied to the analysis of expert survey results. During the expert survey we have revealed that the organizers of the Trio Transilvan festival are somewhat detached about the various negative influences that could affect the development of the event. Insufficient human resources involved in the event organization or their low quality are critical for the festival. The situation when the scope of the event is higher than the expected number of participants is less critical. As for the Cluj Modern festival is concerned, it should be noted that the average values for the five analyzed criteria of organizational risk correspond to the average probability of its implementation. Herewith, risks associated with human resources are high, whereas risks associated with poor quality of event organization is significantly low. In general, the factors of negative impact on the organization of cultural events, performing social and educational missions, are low level of professionalism of the organizers of cultural event, insufficient investment in improving the quality of their human capital, insufficient attention to marketing and financial issues, the lack of a strategy for promoting the event, the invitation of artists, who are partly involved in the show industry. Taking into account the above mentioned information, the studies devoted to the development of theoretical and methodological foundations and practical guides for the integration of organizational risk factors into cultural event management that will consider the features of the national culture in order to improve the quality of their organization, decrease the impact of financial, marketing, information and other restrictions will be promising.

Keywords

management, cultural event, music festival, risk, risk management, spatial development, local communities, expert survey, economic and statistical analysis

For citation

Nistor R.L., Nedelcut A.C. Identifying and managing risk in organizing cultural events (In the case study of the Romanian music festivals). Perm University Herald. Economy, 2019, vol. 14, no. 3, pp. 482–494. DOI 10.17072/1994-9960-2019-3-482-494

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