IngentaConnect Conformity and Resistance: Preparing a Francophone Sporting Event...

Authors: Parent, Milena M.; Slack, Trevor

Source: Event Management, Volume 11, Number 3, 2008 , pp. 129-143(15)

Publisher: Cognizant Communication Corporation

Abstract:

Organizing committees of large-scale sporting events face conflicting pressures from their environment when preparing to host the events, thereby leading them to conform to certain pressures and resist others. Writers on organizations, primarily institutional theorists, have mainly examined conformity, not resistance. This article seeks to examine the competing conforming and resistance pressures for an organizing committee. Findings from a case study relating to the Jeux de la Francophonie, or Games of La Francophonie, highlighted the presence of conflicting pressures between the North American context of the organizing committee and the European, Francophonie context of the event's international body, which impacted goal setting, funding/commercialization, athlete/artist caliber, sanctioning, and international government relationship and VIP treatment. The nature of the event, the stakeholders involved, and the event's setting or context were found to be interrelated sources of pressures on the organizing committee.

Keywords: CONFORMITY; RESISTANCE; INSTITUTIONAL THEORY; EVENTS; CASE STUDY; FRANCOPHONE; FRANCOPHONIE; STAKEHOLDERS; PRESSURE

Document Type: Research article

DOI: 10.3727/152599508784548811

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Conformity and Resistance: Preparing a Francophone Sporting Event in North America