Major Reward and Recognition Events


Book Description

Using a range of interdisciplinary ideas, Major Reward and Recognition Events: Transformations and Critical Perspectives is an expert-led, informative volume exploring the global growth of major award shows and prize-giving ceremonies since the start of the twentieth century and outlining their key multimodal components, core functions and transformations over time. Given the growth of these events, and therefore the increase in complex resources and specialist workers required to assemble and promote them, this book discusses concerns relating to such events, including those pertaining to social justice and representation, environmental impacts, wellbeing, commercialisation, and materialistic excess. Embellished with illustrative tables and images throughout, the book covers a plethora of award shows and ceremonies, evaluating their collective future in an increasingly politically unstable, post-Covid-19 world dealing with growing global environmental change. This significant book is an invaluable resource for academics and researchers of critical event studies, communication, and media studies, as well as related social science disciplines. The book will also be of interest to enthusiasts and organisers of major recognition and reward events.




Critical Event Studies


Book Description

Within events management, events are commonly categorised within two axes, size and content. Along the size axis events range between the small scale and local, through major events, which garner greater media interest, to internationally significant hallmark and mega events such as the Edinburgh Festival and the Tour de France. Content is frequently divided into three forms – culture, sport or business. However, such frameworks overlook and depoliticise a significant variety of events, those more accurately construed as protest. This book brings together new research and theories from around the world and across sociology, leisure studies, politics and cultural studies to develop a new critical pedagogy and critical theory of events. It is the first research monograph that deals explicitly with the concept of critical event studies (CES), the idea that it is impossible to explore and understand events without understanding the wider social, cultural and political contexts. It addresses questions such as can the occupation and reclamation of specific spaces by activists be understood as events within its framework? And is the activity of activists in these spaces a leisure activity? If those, and other similar activities, can be read as events and leisure, what does admitting them into the scope of events management and leisure studies mean for our understanding of them and how the study of events management is to be conceptualised? This title will be of interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students on events management and related courses and scholars interested in understanding the ways in which events are constructed by the social, the cultural and the political.




Events and Well-being


Book Description

This book is the first to take an in-depth examination of events and well-being, adopting a much-needed critical approach to the study of events. It uses empirical case studies to help us better understand how events foster positive well-being or counter negative well-being for event organisers, participants, spectators, volunteers and even non-attending local residents. While researchers have long understood socialisation as the major motivation to attend contemporary festivals and events, it is only just being acknowledged that well-being is also a key motivator. Those researching in the field of event studies are yet to clearly articulate "the how, why, where, and impacts of socialisation." This multidisciplinary book draws together empirical research across a range of event types and sizes, from music festivals to mega sports events, to provide a nuanced understanding of their contribution to the well-being of individuals and communities. Case studies are drawn from around the world and apply a diverse range of theoretical lenses to the conceptualisation of well-being as it applies to events and methodologies used to achieve research aims and objectives. This significant volume will be valuable reading for students and academics in the fields of sport studies, critical event studies, queer studies, cultural studies, tourism, music, sociology and end-of-life studies.




Research Handbook on Major Sporting Events


Book Description

Presenting a comprehensive and pragmatic view on challenges around sporting events, this timely Research Handbook examines the hosting of major sporting events and the impacts they can have on stakeholders. Looking beyond the host destination, it provides a wealth of conceptual analysis on the organisation and administration of such events, including the bidding process, planning, management, sponsorship issues, and marketing.




Events and Infrastructures


Book Description

Innovative and the first of its kind, this informative and multidisciplinary book explores the socio-cultural significance inherent in event infrastructures. While mainstream event management literature addresses event infrastructures mainly through its operational relevance, this carefully compiled edited volume takes infrastructures as an analytical point in respect to its social, political, economic and cultural potential of the study of events. Borrowing from the ongoing social scientific debates on the geography, sociology and anthropology of infrastructures, critical questions are posed in relation to the event contexts. With references to events in Argentina, Malawi, Spain and the UK, among others, the volume combines an international perspective with a highly relevant subject for contemporary event management education. By bringing together theoretical as well as empirical readings on the question of event infrastructures from a critical point of view, the debates are relevant to practitioners and researchers as well as undergraduate and postgraduate students in the field of events, leisure, tourism, anthropology, sociology, geography and urban planning – among others.




Reimagining Community Festivals and Events


Book Description

This book celebrates and builds on Alan Clarke (1956–2021) and Allan Jepson’s 2015 book Exploring Community Festivals and Events. It showcases how far the study of community festivals and events has come in the intervening years, and in so doing it is a response to recent calls for researchers to take a more critical approach to event studies. This is an interdisciplinary book that draws together empirical research across a wide range of community event types, sizes and within diverse communities. Chapters in this book are grouped into four themes that highlight the breadth and depth of work being done: reviving and maintaining tradition(s); a focus on belonging; challenges and tensions; and innovations in teaching and research. Another of its core strengths is its international perspective – the book encompasses research from around the world including Turkey, Portugal, Greece, India, the UK, the US, Austria and New Zealand. There is also a diverse range of theoretical lenses applied to the study of community events, and some innovative methodologies used to achieve research aims and objectives. This volume will appeal to students and researchers in the fields of critical event studies, cultural studies, place-making, tourism, music, sociology and geography. Several chapters also provide insights and key learnings for those lecturing and working in event management and industry professionals.




Protests and the Media


Book Description

This insightful volume critically explores activist events in their scale and their capacity to attract media attention through a critical event studies lens, offering new perspectives on protests and social movement. This book conceives events of dissent as the public manifestation of counter-narratives that articulate advocacy for policy change. It focuses on the material and virtual manifestation of protest events and the media response to them, associated with three active social movements – Reclaim These Streets, Extinction Rebellion, and Black Lives Matter. In doing so, the text sheds light on how different political orientations within the media articulate the representation of events of dissent manifest by these groups, and how this results in significantly different opinion-forming statements on the issues behind those movements, as well as how this reflects mediated assessment of the responses of politicians, the public, and emergency service responses to protest events. Furthermore, it will explore the role of the Internet in the organisation of protest events and their part in the formation of networks of resistance, enabling the roll out of events with a global reach – demonstrated, more recently, by protests across many European cities against the war in Ukraine. This timely and significant book will appeal to scholars of and those interested in events tourism, protest, political communication, and media, amongst others.




Festivals and Edutainment


Book Description

As the first collection of studies to explore the use of edutainment within festival experiences, this book extends current knowledge and understanding of festival experiences. Relying on a series of international case studies, this book offers readers unique and important insights that emphasise the benefit of edutainment activities for enhanced audience learning, engagement, and festival satisfaction. Although there is an ample amount of studies concerning festival experiences, as well as the use of edutainment within tourism, few have explored the use of edutainment within festival experiences. This oversight has created a lack in knowledge and understanding, despite the clear benefits of enjoyable learning experiences - edutainment. Moreover, it has created a gap between academia and practice, as the contributing authors have demonstrated, festivals are utilising edutainment to enhance their audience experience, yet scholars have failed to acknowledge this. In response to this oversight, the editors have assembled a carefully curated collection of chapters that include a wide range of international case studies, from science and food festivals to heritage and dark festivals. Through a variety of methodologies and methods, including interviews, observations, databases, netnography, and social media analysis in both face-to-face and digital interactions involving the festival participants, organisers, and other relevant stakeholders, the contributing authors have provided a well-rounded global perspective on how edutainment is applied within festival experiences. This book is valuable for scholars, festival organisers, policy makers and students interested in or studying festivals, events, edutainment and/or experience design. Other tourism industry scholars, professionals and students of, for example, visitor attractions, museums, theatre and hospitality services, may also find this book of value considering their established use of edutainment within their sectors.




Strategic Reward and Recognition


Book Description

Non-monetary incentives and recognition programmes are an area of employee motivation that is often overlooked. Yet, as Fisher's book reveals, a strategic focus on non-cash rewards can generate significant return on investment in terms of employee engagement, performance improvement and financial results. In the present economic context, with companies pushing to deliver more for less, it is a particularly pertinent issue. Strategic Reward and Recognition brings together theory and practice to guide HR professionals, consultants and senior leaders in developing the most effective programmes for their organizations. It features examples of good practice from all over the world, from different sectors and from both large and small organizations, providing coverage of digital as well as in-person schemes.




Bring Your Whole Self To Work


Book Description

In today’s work environment, the lines between our professional and personal lives are blurred more than ever before. Whatever is happening to us outside of our workplace—whether stressful, painful, or joyful—follows us into work as well. We may think we have to keep these realities under wraps and act as if we “have it all together.” But as Mike Robbins explains, we can work better, lead better, and be more engaged and fulfilled if—instead of trying to hide who we are—we show up fully and authentically. Mike, a sought-after motivational speaker and business consultant, has spent more than 15 years researching, writing, and speaking about essential human experiences and high performance in the workplace. His clients have ranged from Google to Citibank, from the U.S. Department of Labor to the San Francisco Giants. From small start-ups in Silicon Valley to family-owned businesses in the Midwest. From what he’s seen and studied over the years, Mike believes that for us to thrive professionally, we must be willing to bring our whole selves to the work that we do. Bringing our whole selves to work means acknowledging that we’re all vulnerable, imperfect human beings doing the best we can. It means having the courage to take risks, speak up, have compassion, ask for help, connect with others in a genuine way, and allow ourselves to be truly seen. In this book, Mike outlines five principles we can use to approach our own work in this spirit of openness and humanity, and to help the people we work with feel safe enough to do the same, so that the teams and organizations we’re a part of can truly succeed. “This book will offer you insights, ideas, and tools to inspire you to bring all of who you are to the work that you do—regardless of where you work, what kind of work you do, and with whom you do it. And, if you’re an owner, leader, or just someone who wants to have influence on those around you—this book will also give you specific techniques for how to build or enhance your team’s culture in such a way that encourages others to bring all of who they are to work.”