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Festivals are conceptualised in this chapter as temporary organisations embedded in more permanent structures (e.g. festival lead organisation). Festivals face a series of paradoxical tensions common to temporary organisations in creative fields. These tensions arise, in part, from the diversity of actors involved in festivals and the distinctive values and priorities they bring to their festival organisational involvement. Lucca Comics & Games (LC&G), which is one of the biggest comic-cons in the world, operates in the intersection of different institutional contexts, which include a wide range of actors involved. Thus, tensions appear within the LC&G domain as a result of these actors’ different levels of involvement in the festival organisation and their diverse identities. These tensions and their resolutions will be analysed from the perspective of extant theory on paradox. A specific focus of this chapter is on the belonging paradox, which concerns the role of competing identities among different types of festival participants and how these competing identities are manifested in the organisational identity of LC&G, its structures and processes. Our study provides evidence of identity tensions as both/and relationships that are not mutually exclusive or antagonistic. The authors also suggest that ‘place identity’ requires further examination as a distinctive feature of temporary organising in festivals, considering its role in mediating tensions arising from the belonging paradox amongst festival main actors (exhibitors, artists, public bodies and lead organisation employees).

Hallmark events can be very beneficial for host communities, not least due to their potential in attracting tourists. The Peace & Love music festival was the hallmark event of the Swedish city Borlänge. In 2013, the event organization declared bankruptcy and canceled the forthcoming festival. The purpose of this paper is to identify and discuss the factors that caused the failure of the 2013 Peace & Love festival.

The case of the Peace & Love festival is analyzed using three data sources: interviews with the former members of the event organization; secondary data describing the Swedish festival industry; and festival visitors’ perspectives represented by comments on social media. An organizational ecology perspective frames the analysis.

The results of the study reveal that the failure of the event can be understood by a combination of three components: an organization in a vulnerable position, a strong new competitor entering the Swedish festival market, and uncertain visitors searching for the new place to be.

Very few studies have researched event failure, although the subject is a recommended priority within the field of festival studies. This study presents a thorough examination of a hallmark event failure, which contributes to this area of knowledge and provides relevant information for organizations and host cities.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the utilisation and application of reflexive ethnography as an interpretative methodology for researching knowledge practices within festival organisations.

The ethnographic approach incorporates two methods of data collection in the research design; participant observation and in‐depth interviews.

The research identified that knowledge management practices and processes are often invisible to festival staff when they are embedded within a cohesive organisational culture. Ethnography enables the researcher to make explicit the tacit and normalised ways of working that contribute to the success (and failure) of festival organisations to manage knowledge. The immersion of the researcher in the ethnographic process provided a rich understanding of the relational dimension of knowledge management that would be difficult to elicit from in‐depth interviews alone.

New fields of study require a range of research methodologies to inform theoretical and practice‐based knowledge related to event participation and management. This article contributes to the growing event management literature through a unique focus on ethnography as a research method that offers a deeper understanding of knowledge practices within festival organisations.

Limited research has applied an ethnographic approach to festival and event management. This article builds upon early adopters and provides critical insight into the benefits and constraints of ethnographic research.

Legitimacy is a classic theme, quite present in organisational studies in general, but in the field of tourism it still has room to advance. For that reason, this research seeks to delimit the concept of legitimacy and adapt it to the context of tourism events; and seeks to validate a measurement instrument that allows to evaluate of its recognition in the imagination of residents, and to evaluate the impacts of this construct on residents’ trust in the organisers of Brazilian Oktoberfest, on the negative externalities of those events and, ultimately, on the achievement of residents’ loyalty.

The locus of the research are the cities of Blumenau, Santa Catarina and Santa Cruz do Sul, Santa Catarina, both located in southern Brazil, whose residents answered an online questionnaire about the legitimacy of the Oktoberfest held there. A total of 365 valid questionnaires were collected, tabulated in statistical software and interpreted using exploratory-confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling.

The results show that festival legitimacy is a theoretical construct that can be measured as either a first-order or second-order factor, consisting of three factors, called moral legitimacy, pragmatic legitimacy and cognitive legitimacy.

This research provides a valid and reliable tool for assessing local residents' acceptance of ethno-cultural festivals. It also shows variations in the perception of legitimacy, demonstrating that this can influence other aspects of residents' perception of ethnocultural events.

In this paper, the authors explore how Edinburgh's key Festivals have adapted to the COVID-19 pandemic. Their response presents the emergence of more innovative festival delivery models and a different imagining of the festival space.

The authors use a qualitative mixed methods research design involving 13 in-depth semi-structured interviews with Edinburgh's Festival Directors and other cultural and policy stakeholders as part of a University-funded stand-alone research project. The interviews were supplemented with participant observation at festivals virtually and in-person to experience new and emerging formats of festival content delivery, adherence to Scottish Government guidelines on COVID-19 safety, and to experience attending festivals during a pandemic.

The authors present findings on how Edinburgh's Festivals have responded to Covid-19 and how they have adapted – and in some cases reimagined – their business models to survive.

The authors propose a new theoretical framework that establishes a model for how festivals can approach risk management within their business model, focused on the ‘3R's’ – respond, resilience and reimagine –with communication and support being central to this framework.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how the budget, when split into a network of projects, can act as a management tool to balance control with creativity.

A case study is used to discuss the budget in a large Norwegian festival. Simons’ (1995) concept of interactive use of budgets is applied for the analysis of empirical findings. Especially, the authors focus on the design and use of the budget and how it is aligned with the specific characteristics of festivals as economic organizations.

The findings support earlier research which focusses on the need to balance between control and dynamic changes to successfully manage festivals. This study gives a detailed knowledge on how managers use budgets to combine management control with creativity and dynamic adaptions.

This study contributes to a detailed understanding of how managers can use budgets as tools to stabilize between uncertainty, creativity and control.

The purpose of this paper is to present a part of a research study, undertaken over three years, in which the author observed the organization of an annual, community-based, arts and crafts festival in rural central Sweden. By examining the participation of a specific village community group in the organization of the festival, this paper sets out to explore links between the practices of organizing and the culture of a community group engaged in them.

The research study was conducted over three annual cycles of the festival, and its methods reflected the author's position as both a tourist visitor to the festival and a volunteer participant. This paper presents a “thick-description” of the work of a single community volunteer group in the annual organization their village's festival contribution, based on observational and informal interview data from the author's position as a member of that group, and some of the photographic data gathered.

The account presented in this paper offers an examination of the annual routines of a small village community group in organizing their contribution to the broader multi-site festival event observed in the research study. The introduction of anthropological concepts linked to ritual practices extends the understanding of organizing in this setting.

A contribution to the development of an understanding of organizing in recurring, group-organized event settings through a detailed consideration of a micro-level ethnographic study data.

The paper seeks to examine the concepts, types and implications of festival innovation and failure.

A review of extant literature is undertaken and examples of innovation and failure in three festivals are used to demonstrate the simultaneity and co‐dependency of innovation and failure in the process of festival management.

It is apparent that many forms of program, market, service, organisational and financial innovation are available to festival managers. Many involve risk of failure due to the resource dependency theory postulated in the literature, as well as more pragmatic reasons including bad weather and managerial incompetence.

Festival managers responses to the dual challenges of embracing innovation and avoiding failure will determine the future of festivals, so it is vital that knowledge is developed.

There is limited literature on festival management innovation and failure and limited information available to festival managers regarding the nature of festivals that facilitate innovation or failure. This paper makes an original contribution to these important issues in festival management.

Community-run festivals are an emerging giant in the tourism industry. Nowadays many local festivals have emerged with the specific objectives of celebrating local culinary traditions, establishing business and trade of local products and developing sustainable destinations. Local events can influence the destination image, enabling the growth of tourist flows and stimulate destination marketing organizations to differentiate their own destination products from those of competitors. Two main aspects are analyzed: the main characteristics of local events and the influence of local festival on destination image. Moreover, the economic impact of festivals on the community and the main tourism management strategies adopted by managers are investigated. Finally, theoretical and managerial implications deriving from the chapter are discussed.

To make sense of the relationship between the festival attendance and the aims in arts festival management, the purpose of this paper is to explore the key characteristics for success and analyze the perceptions of the future in arts festival productions.

This qualitative study uses interviews with festival managers and empathy-based stories (MEBS) written by members of festival audience. Discourse analysis is employed for answering the questions: What are the characteristics of a successful festival, and what could ruin it?

The paper highlights the importance of interaction with the audience orchestrated by the festival organization. Such interaction co-constructs a more holistic festival experience valued by both parties, which supports the sustainability and future success.

The research data are limited to one country, and music festivals dominate the data.

Among managers, there is a need to consider audiences as consumers and as producers in the current competitive climate in the arts and cultural field and clarify the role of the audience as a partner in the networked festival production by placing the attendee at the core of the strategic planning process of arts festivals.

The research combines the views of the demand-and-supply side. It adds to the knowledge in arts and festival management by exploring the relationship between attendance and the aims of arts festival management in general, and the key characteristics of success in the arts festival context in particular. MEBS offers new interesting opportunities for future research in qualitative festival research.