Queen U Anele

Paper and Presentation: Adoption of Project Management Practices by Event Management Organizations in North West England

Abstract: Event practitioners affirm that the Project Management practice is adopted and implemented in their organisation as it is where most of their concepts and principles emerge from. Event Management has all the characteristics of a project, which makes Project Management (PM) techniques an important subject in the Event Management Body of Knowledge. The aim of the study is to develop a business process map for the benchmarking of PM practices for EMOs in North West (NW) England. The objectives are: To establish the concepts and principles of EM; whilst critically reviewing existing and most common PM methodologies adopted across the world; to access the adoption of current PM practices (processes, tools & techniques) by Event Management Organisations (EMOs) in England using the existing methodologies as benchmark (for comparing if EMOs adhere to PM practices); A process map would be developed to appreciate the findings from research carried out in this study.

A qualitative method was used to achieve the overall aim and objectives in this research. A qualitative case study methodology via a semi-structured interview technique was employed as data collection tool due to the exploratory nature of the research, with data collected from 6 case studies purposively sampled to Event Managers, Event Practitioners, Project Leaders, and other Professionals of the Event industry (private sector), and EM Departments of Local Authorities (public sector). A comprehensive literature review on past and present EM practices were used as secondary source of data collection.

The findings from the literature review were presented in a tabular format of comparison of PM methodologies, and process maps illustrating the processes within each of those methodologies were developed. The Single-case narrative technique was used to analyse and present the findings of each case, and the Cross-case synthesis technique was used to analyse and present the multiple cases on each interview question asked. The Comparative Analysis technique was deployed to identify each process within the case studies, comparing them with a typical PM process.

The research outcome of this study was a generic business process map showing event activities that represents all the cases investigated, using a review of literature as research basis and existing PM methodologies as benchmark. This generic business process map was derived by the use of typical PM processes from initiation to closure as a guide, to examine what event activities would be classed under those PM processes.

PMI Talent Triangle: Technical Project Management

Biography: Queen Uchechi Anele is currently enrolled as a PhD research student in Project Management at the University of Central Lancashire in Preston United Kingdom. Currently researching on Corporate event project management in the UK.