The application of post-project reviews in events management by cultural operators

Abstract: Organisations have evidently shifted towards the projectification of their activities and operations across the world and across industries by which project management is not only limited to construction and engineering projects anymore. The projectification has shed light on the amount of project success and failure in which both have been noted to have a steep difference between each other. Whilst many factors have been discovered to be a trigger of failure or success one emerging subject that has been gaining attention across management institutions and organisationsis the integration of knowledge management principlesinto the closure stage of a project, by which the term post-project review awakens. Post-project reviewsreceive a lot of attention and strong suggestion from textbooks and other academic literature, however it was found that its application was not as effective as is suggested by the literature. Literature also indicated that cultural operators within the events management have progressively applied project management tools and techniques. At the same time there is debate concerning theproject management rationale, which collide with the prime principles of art. Here art presents itself as the core focus pointforcultural operators. In the light of this argument the author started researching the subject of Post-project reviews within the events management industryand found that the subject has been scarcely researched overall, in the events management sector and especially in the cultural branch, hence the author had identified a research gap. Consequently, this research intends to explore the application of post-project reviews by cultural operators within the events management industry. The study employed a qualitative research design in which semi-structured interviews were conducted across three different organisational size segments; micro, small and medium. The organisational size was determined with the amount of employees per organisation; each size segment had two representatives in which all of the respondents ran a non-profit organisation.The research revealed that medium organisations employed the most formal manner of a PPR by which PPR’s are considered on a strategic level whilst micro organisations still used a simplerecord and report principle, in which none of the recorded numbers were formally analysed. At the same time, the comprehensiveness of a PPR was very much dependent on the size of the project, which denoted on the amount of funding, and external stakeholders there was involved.