Event leadership matters: why a shared approach might be the answer to improved working practices in events

Abstract

This research note addresses the substantial theoretical and empirical gaps in understanding event leadership and highlights the need for urgent scholarly attention in this area. In both the events industries and event studies there still exists a prevailing view that leadership is conducted only by those in formal leadership positions. In the wider frame of leadership studies, this view has been largely dismissed. We therefore challenge the conventional view of leadership in the event sector, and call for engagement with contemporary, rather than traditional perspectives of leadership, and a shift in understanding of leadership as an integral aspect of the creation and delivery of event experiences. Specifically, we propose that one of the contemporary theories of leadership, that of shared leadership, provides an effective model that could be developed further by other scholars in order to empirically understand how this theory can improve working practices in events.