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Since the 1960s, the impact of mega sporting events on the built environment has become increasingly important, and the relationship between hosting cities and events increasingly complex and controversial. The outcomes of these mega-events, however, are very discouraging, especially in terms of the state of sports venues and event sites. In many cases, Olympic parks and event sites stand abandoned once the event is over, and sports facilities are often either closed or underutilized. The purpose of this paper is to identify replicable best practices and successful examples used in mega-events to transform events sites and venues into livable public open spaces (POS), enjoyed by the local communities.

Three cities were selected for this investigation: London, Sochi and Rio de Janeiro. London hosted the 2012 Summer Olympics, and this study focused particularly on its Olympic park, Queen Elizabeth Park. Sochi hosted the 2014 Winter Olympics but also some of the matches of the 2018 FIFA World Cup. Rio de Janeiro hosted the 2016 Summer Olympics and also a part of the 2014 FIFA World Cup. Each case was investigated according to a methodology composed of interviews with experts, site visits, and analysis of the bidding book and post-event reports to check the consistency between promises and legacies.

The research identified a framework of six major elements that determine, or contrast, the long-term use of events sites and sport facilities, and highlighted some main attributes to consider in order to transform sporting event sites into livable and enjoyable open spaces. It is expected that this framework can be used as a guidance to deliver sustainable events and long-term legacies and to define a strategy for optimization of planning mega sport events.

Mega events provide near-unique, fast track opportunities for urban transformation. This research can be used as guidance for the overall mega sporting events stakeholders, such as the IOC, FIFA, and local organizing committees, to identify replicable best practices and successful examples in the leverage of mega events to transform events sites and venues into livable POS.

Why is it so difficult to transform event sites and sport venues into livable areas of cities? What are the recurrent mistakes, issues, and challenges that hosting cities have to face? This research is unique as it aims at answering these questions by defining a framework of relevant factors for hosting cities to help them in the planning of mega sporting events. The research also highlighted some recurrent mistakes, such as the exorbitant costs of a mega event, the inability to keep the initial budget unchanged and the difficulty to adjust plans to local needs.

In the past decade, firms have become more aware of supply chain disruptions and their impact on the firm. Developing a supply chain resilience organizational culture has been proposed as an effective way to manage supply chain risks. This study intends to explore how the geographical location risks impact the decision to develop a supply chain resilience strategy, in particular, to anticipate the disruption proactively and have a business continuity plan in place. Using a unique database including thousands of manufacturing locations that belong to over 7,000 firms across 102 countries, we test three hypotheses to understand if geographical location risks, frequency of disruptive events, and the region in which a site is located are factors for the likelihood of a firm having a business continuity plan at their locations. The study also seeks to understand if there are regional effects and firm effects affecting the decision to develop resilience. With a particular focus in Latin America and the firms with a manufacturing presence in that region. The main findings of the study are that natural disaster risks do tend to develop a culture of resilience, while macroeconomic risks tend to do the opposite. These results remain stable for firms' effects. The Latin America region shows no observable statistical difference in developing resilience compared to the Asia region. While the Northern America region shows more resilience compared to Asia. We conclude that economic risk is less predictable and harder to develop a plan for than disruptions, such as natural disasters. The findings of this study present an opportunity for governments to develop resilience plans that can make their countries more attractive for investment to multinational firms looking to establish new manufacturing locations around the world.

The purpose of this paper is to illuminate how the strategic decisions a visitor attraction (VA) makes in relation to how it handles weddings or corporate functions on site will have a direct affect on what “work process knowledge” (WPK) an employee will need.

The qualitative research design was comparative case studies of the work processes and knowledge within six Scottish VAs, based on a social constructivist framework. Data were gathered using the methods of key informant interviews and shadowing.

“Rich and thick” description illustrates the issues arising from using a VA as a wedding or function venue, highlighting the WPK workers require to convert the site between the two functions.

Although cross‐site commonalities of the six cases validate the findings, a broader survey of a greater number of VAs would be beneficial, as would a review of how WPK has subsequently evolved in VAs, especially in relation to events.

WPK is an attitude, commitment and understanding at an overview level, incorporating a strong element of strategy as well as individual tasks. The event organiser is shown how developing WPK in staff can contribute to success.

To date this is the first study of WPK in relation to VAs and certainly in relation to events. To academics, it represents an original contribution to the theory of WPK and for practitioners enhances management understanding for improving event delivery.

Events feed our desire to connect, celebrate and share experiences. Visiting or taking part in Children's events forms part of many a child's upbringing. They are part of family life. All well-planned events share the same core principals whatever their size or type. Children's events are no different. Events designed with children in mind require no less time or effort. The audience may well be young but don't be fooled into thinking that they are any less demanding! Your event needs to work on many levels to please this audience and their parents and or guardians. While the process of planning a Children's events is the same as that aimed at adults, they are more difficult to deliver because of the requirements of the legislation designed to safeguard and protect children, while at events. The legislation and best practice guidance is all designed to ensure children attending events are kept safe, free from harm and if they, for example, get lost, there is a procedure in place to reunite parents and children. This chapter is specifically about events where children are the primary audience, either specifically or because of the nature the event programme children often attend with their parents. It will give you an overview of the seven steps event managers take to ensure they deliver successful and safe children's events.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the push and pull factors associated with the consumption of Chinese Table Tennis Super League (CTTSL) game events by online audiences and on-site attendants.

Conducting a comprehensive review of literature and a test of content validity, a questionnaire was formulated to assess push and pull motives, event consumption, and sociodemographic variables. A total of 433 CTTSL event consumers, including 225 respondents who primarily followed CTTSL game events via television and webcasting and 208 respondents who primarily consumed the events by attending live game events.

Structural equation modeling analyses revealed that for online consumers, two push factors, self-esteem and drama excitement, were found to be positively related to the event consumption factors; whereas, social interaction and sport performance factors were found to be negatively predictive of event consumption factors. For on-site consumers, none of the push and pull factors were found to be related to the consumption factors.

These results indicate that unlike research findings derived in other research settings mainly conducted in Western countries, push and pull factors are more functional for online CTTSL consumers who are of comparatively stronger fandom level, which are likely affected by CTTSL’s contemporary operations.

Enriching the dual process theory through examining its applicability in studying sport consumer behavior, from both perspectives of internal and external motivations; applying theories and research findings of internal and external motivations that have primarily been derived in Western countries into a professional sport setting in China; identifying unique and diverse perspectives of professional table tennis consumers in China between online and on-site consumers; contrary to the findings derived in Western countries, the motivational factors are more functional for online CTTSL consumers who are of comparatively stronger fandom level, which are likely affected by CTTSL’s contemporary operations; and conducting micro-perspective analyses to study Chinese sport consumer behaviors, which has rarely been done in contemporary scholarly inquiries in China.

The purpose of our study is to investigate how a manufacturing plant’s internal operations along with its network of connections (upstream and downstream) can have an impact on its recovery time from a disruption. The authors also examine the inverse-U impact of complexity. Finally, the authors test the moderating role that business continuity management plans (BCP) at the plant level have on recovery time.

To test our hypotheses, the authors partnered with Resilinc Corporation, a Silicon Valley-based provider of supply chain risk management solutions to identify focal firms’ suppliers, customers and plant-level data including information on parts, manufacturing activities, bill of materials, alternate sites and formal business continuity plans. The authors employed censored data regression technique (Tobit).

Several important findings reveal that the plant’s internal operations and network connections impact recovery time. Specifically, the number of parts manufactured at the plant as well as the number of internal plant processes significantly increase disruption recovery time. In addition, the number of supply chains (upstream and downstream) involving the plant as well as the echelon distance of the plant from its original equipment manufacturer significantly increase recovery time. The authors also find that there exists an inverted-U relationship between complexity and recovery time. Finally, the authors find partial support that BCP will have a negative moderating effect between complexity and recovery time.

This research highlights gaps in the literature related to supply chain disruption and recovery. There is a need for more accurate methods to measure recovery time, more research on recovery at the supply chain site level and further analysis of the impact of supply chain complexity on recovery time.

Delays in construction projects are both disruptive and expensive. Thus, potential causes of schedule deviation need to be identified and mitigated. In previous research, delay factors were predominantly identified through surveys administered to stakeholders in construction projects. Such delay factors are typically considered individually and presented at the same level without explicitly examining their sequence of occurrence and inter-relationships. In reality, owing to the complex structure of construction projects and long execution time, non-conformance to schedule occurs by a chain of cascading events. An understanding of these linkages is important not only for minimising the delays but also for revealing the liability of stakeholders. To explicitly illustrate the cause–effect and logical relationship between delay factors and further identify the primary factors which possess the highest significance toward the overall project schedule delay, the fault tree analysis (FTA) method, a widely implemented approach to root cause problems in safety-critical systems, has been systematically and rigorously executed.

Using a case study, the in-depth analysis for identifying the most fundamental delay factors has been fulfilled through FTA's tree structure. The logical deduction for mapping and visualising the chronological and cause–effect relationships between various delay factors has been conducted through the logical gate functions of FTA based on the data collected from the site event log, pre-fabricated structural component manufacturing log and face-to-face interview with project stakeholders.

The analysis identified multiple delay factors and showed how they are linked logically and chronologically from the primary causes to the ultimate undesired event in a rigorous manner. A comparison was performed between the proposed FTA model and the conventional investigation method for revealing the responsibility employed in the construction industry, consisting of event logs and problem reports. The results indicate that the FTA model provides richer information and a clearer picture of the network of delay factors. Importantly, the ability of FTA in revealing the causal connection between the events leading to the undesired delays and in comprehending their prominence in the real-world construction project has been clearly displayed.

This study demonstrates a new application of FTA in the construction sector allowing the delay factors to be understood and visualised from a new perspective. The new approach has practical use in finding and removing root causes of the delay, as well as clarifying the attribution of responsibility that causes the delay.

Faced with ever-increasing advertising restrictions, sponsorship of sports has been an important promotional avenue for tobacco companies in North America and around the world. This paper examines the corporate sponsorship objectives and strategies of tobacco companies, based primarily on historical documents from the British-American Tobacco Co., which has operations in over 80 countries. The documents are part of the Guildford Depository located in Guildford, England. It contains over six million pages of corporate documents for the British-American Tobacco Company (BAT) from a 40-year span (early 1950s to mid 1990s). Tobacco company sponsorship practices include developing sponsorship evaluation guidelines, extensive prepromotion and post-promotion of sponsored events, making full use of the event site for sponsorship identification, ensuring that sponsored events are televised, and using an extensive array of public relations practices to ensure news coverage of a sponsored event. Other sponsors could benefit from emulating the sponsorship practices of tobacco companies.

The purpose of this paper is to explore recent technological and methodological developments in the evaluation of audience behaviour at planned events and discuss the implications for researchers in this field, particularly the advantages of evaluating in real‐time. The creation and staging of the event experience – the realm of event design – is predicated on an understanding of the psychosocial domain of the audience. By understanding the motivations, the behaviours and the predispositions that the audience brings to the event, and how event design principles and techniques can be applied to influence audience behaviour in real time, the event designer is able to more successfully create and stage the event experience to meet the aims and objectives of the event.

The paper discusses international developments in the evaluation of the psychosocial domain of audiences at planned events and the range of research methodologies being used from a practitioner academic perspective. The paper will look at current research being undertaken in Sweden, Austria and Australia and identify trends internationally in this nascent field of research.

The paper argues that real time data collection of audiences provides insights into the effective design and management of planned events, particularly from the event risk management perspective.

Drawing on work being undertaken in the mass gatherings, tourism and service fields, the paper examines and synthesises these into a proposed model for the effective evaluation of the event audience.

This paper argues for an increase in – and a model for – research on audience behaviour, specifically in the real time capture and analysis of data of audiences at events as a means of developing and understanding of the effects of event design techniques applied at planned events.

The purpose of the study was to explore multidirectional flows of information over the course of an emergency. The following research questions were designed to guide this study: How does social media communication unfold over the course of an emergency at a cultural event? How does the nature and purpose of social media communication between all SM users change once an emergency occurs that affects event operations? How does the sentiment of social media communication change once an emergency occurs that affects event operations?

This study explored how social media was used to communicate about on-site emergencies at community cultural events. Three events were studied before, during and after an on-site emergency that disrupted the event. The Twitter and Facebook posts referencing emergencies that took place at Shambhala, Detonate and Zombicon were explored, and the nature and purpose of the posts revealed how online communication changed throughout the emergencies. The Social Mediated Crisis Communication Model guided this research and findings contribute to the model's ongoing development by incorporating additional theories and models.

The research demonstrates that social media communication shifts during an emergency and how communication moves through a network changes. Once an emergency is underway, communication increases and who is talking with whom changes. The nature and purpose of the social media conversation also evolves over the course of an emergency.

This study examined the social media communication during three on-site emergencies at three different cultural events. The findings contribute to the understanding of the Social Media Crisis Communication Model. Specifically, the research confirms the various actors who engage online but also shows that two-way communication is not common. As this study only examined three events experiencing three different emergencies, we have a limited understanding of how the type of emergencies affects social media communication.

The findings show the need for pre-crisis work by event organizers. It is necessary for the events to build trust with their online communities to ensure that when an emergency occurs the event will be seen as a trusted source. Also, staff training is needed to ensure people are prepared to handle the complexities of communicating online during an emergency. Issues like misinformation, influencers and the rapid pace of social media communication create a challenging environment for staff who are unprepared.

Emergencies can threaten the survival of event organizations and put the health and wellness of attendees, staff and other stakeholders at risk. The study of crisis communication in special event contexts has received little theoretical attention and yet it is an important area of event management practice. Social media is an essential part of communication strategies and should be integrated into emergency planning to best reach people when an emergency threatens the safety of those involved with the event. The Social Media Crisis Communication Model offers some insight, but understanding its relevance is necessary if it is to be integrated into event emergency management.