The Legitimacy of Festivals and Their Stakeholders: Concepts and Propositions

Abstract

This conceptual article provides an overview of organizational and stakeholder legitimacy as applied to the study of festivals and their networks of stakeholders. Legitimacy is shown to be a vital condition for festival acceptance and sustainability. Different kinds of criteria for judging legitimacy (legal, pragmatic, moral, and cognitive) are illustrated by reference to typical festival stakeholders. As well, legitimacy can either be situational, depending on problems at hand, or more permanently derived from legal status or institutional arrangements and ownership. Networks of stakeholders have to be considered, and at the levels of industry (i.e., the festival/event sector), area (e.g., festivals in a city), and firm (the festival organization). This article concludes with a discussion of practical management implications, and with a set of propositions that can be used as hypotheses to be tested and as a general guide for future research and interdisciplinary theory building.

Defining the Field of Events

“…The focus changed from a logistical, operational, or categorical purview to being considered from a “social constructed staged experience” in every phase of an event (Orefice, 2018, p. 20). The participant experience has become central in event discussions and must be considered throughout every facet of events (Breiter & Milman, 2006; Jung & Tanford, 2017; Larson et al, 2015; Liu et al, 2017; Mackellar, 2006; Mair, 2010; Pope et al, 2017; Rittichainuwat & Mair, 2012). Ong and Goh (2018) suggested that the value of events rest in the ability to build community beyond just the value of economic or corporate agendas.…”

“…Festivals are also one of the most prolific research areas of study in events inquiry (Tanford & Jung, 2017). These types of events vary and often have multiple stakeholders and stakeholder goals (Larson et al, 2015). The size and scope of festivals vary from thousands of attendees to small community festivals with only a few dozen attendees.…”

The Stakeholder Sandwich: A New Stakeholder Analysis Model for Events and Festivals

“…Furthermore, with power primarily influenced by economic considerations, salience is not considered consistent across normative and instrumental criteria (Crane & Ruebottom, 2011). In relation to Legitimacy, three types are explored conceptualizing the term "Eventful City" (Getz, 2017), while 13 propositions are presented for legitimacy building theory for festival and event management (Larson, Getz, & Pastras, 2015). A thorough critique of the Salience Model asserts that Mitchell misrepresented Freeman's version of stakeholder theory in its development and the "principle of who and what really counts" has the limited perspective of the manager (Derry, 2012).…”

“…Continued research is deemed necessary to determine relevance in mapping stakeholders of events and factors that contribute to their involvement (Reid & Arcodia 2002) and stakeholders are considered important in creating legitimacy for events (Larson et al, 2015). A review of the literature suggests that empirical research on the management, operation, and governance of festivals and events has been somewhat limited to date (Laing, 2017).…”

Event Design in Outdoor Music Festival Audience Behavior (A Critical Transformative Research Note)

“…Further, it is proposed that democratic objectives in a decade described as turbulent times (Devine & Devine, 2012;Getz, Andersson, & Larson, 2006;Larson, Getz, & Pastras, 2015;Van Niekerk & Pizam, 2015) are often more suited to a position of cotransformation in which leadership must reestablish trust with others to validate responses to critical issues as quickly and as systematically as possible. Accordingly, while the movement to a cocreative paradigm is both irreversible and an important one for society today (Sanders & Stappers, 2008;Venkat, 2009), and while there is a changing focus on value creation (Van Winkle & Bueddefeld, 2016), so too there are limitations to its application.…”