Identifying and managing risk in organizing cultural events (in the case study of the Romanian music festivals)

F

estivals are characterized

manifestations by multiple performances endowed with a repetitive character and which can be organized both by professionals and non-profit entities from the cultural or artistic field [1]. However, institutions providing cultural performances or activities require the adoption of flexible management actions with the task of adapting to unexpected challenges [2]. Continuous efforts to launch new cultural products represent one of the directions studied by the specialists in the domain [3–7]. Festivals can provide an economic boost to the local communities which host their organization, providing opportunities for value-added activities, especially for locals, as well as a fact signalled by researchers: they improve the image of a particular location [8]. This accounts for the support and development of the festivals in relation to local economic development strategies [9; 10] as well as their inclusion into economic policies, contributing, on regional and local level, to the development of the cultural potential. Identifying and assessing risk situations should be attributes specific to an organizational entity, risk management being one of the important components in staging a festival. This involves identifying and assessing risks along with establishing measures to reduce the possibilities of occurrence, or to mitigate the consequences of their materialization, respectively [11; 12]. Music festivals contain “virtually every risk imaginable” asserted Bethan Moorcraft in Insurance Business UK (February, 2019), emphasizing the need to create risk avoidance strategies, from a complete perspective, from a marketing, operational, and financial standpoint [13].

In order to support the implementation of a coherent risk prevention strategy for two festivals built on a similar theme, the organizing institutions of these two events initiated an investigation that aimed at identifying the strategic risks that could affect the effectiveness of the activities related to their specific objectives. The two festivals share some common traits, among which we mention [14]:

• 1.    The purpose of their organization: the promotion of Romanian music of the area – the traditional music festival the Trio Transilvan retrieves and preserves a specific repertoire of the area, for the string trio; the Cluj Modern contemporary music festival is an event that promotes contemporary cultivated music, capitalizing on the artistic potential of Cluj Napoca (performers, composers, musicologists), proposing a showcase of the Cluj school of composition and representing a high professional

• 2.    A constant audience interested in the thematic content and of high professional level [16] the Trio Transilvan festival also includes a contest of the trio ensembles participating in the festival. This type of competition has always existed, even if not in an institutionalized form, when the village musicians competed to prove their qualities and make a name for themselves [17]. The Cluj Modern festival represents an advance of contemporary musical creation, with many searches, innovations, experiments or syntheses signed by contemporary creators;

• 3.    The main objective of the organizing public institutions is the education and the support of some cultural activities: the City Hall, the Local Council in Gherla and the Cluj County Centre for Preservation and Promotion of Traditional Culture for the Trio Transilvan festival, and the Music Academy in Cluj, the Union of Composers and Musicologists in Romania, and Sigismund Toduţă Foundation for the Cluj Modern festival, respectively;

• 4.    The venues of events in attractive areas [18]. The Trio Transilvan festival is held in Gherla, a town in Cluj County that has a lot of neighbouring village communities but lacks an artistic institution employing musicians; this way the festival is known and frequented by the locals every year [5; 19]. The Cluj Modern festival is organized in a higher education institution, benefiting from professional coordination, organizational assistance and the interest of the specialists in the domain;

• 5.    Limited financial support provided by co-organizing institutions [20], the Ministry of Culture and various sponsors.

challenge. It is a niche festival, which features confer it an aura of uniqueness in the national cultural landscape [15];

The novelty of the study concerns the fact that in the field of cultural management the specialists did not investigate the organizational efficiency of some festivals coordinated by cultural non-profit organizations, heritage or educational organizations in which the task of adopting managerial approaches is assigned to specialists from the institutions subordinated to the state. In the case of many cultural institutions in Romania, these specialists belong to commissions within the Ministry of Culture and Religious Affairs, or they are members of the County Councils or of the Local Councils. Public events do not seek profit and have different social missions.

Methodology

Due to the extremely high professional level of the two festivals (signaled by both specialists and the attendees) in order to ensure the continuity of these events, it is useful to have a set of information from the perspective of the actors involved, regarding the risks that may arise in their organization and unfolding. The results may subsequently be used both for risk assessment and for the development of appropriate proactive policies, with the aim of minimizing their effects.

In order to assess the likelihood of a risk, starting from the frequency of materialization of risks from the previous editions of the mentioned events, a questionnaire divided into 5 sections was applied to 60 people directly involved in the development of the two events: directors of coorganizing institutions, festival directors, financial managers, administrative staff, artists, volunteers. The study has a quantitative component, which employed a survey conducted on two samples of 30 respondents. The questionnaires applied to the participants in the two cultural events, the Cluj Modern and the Trio Transilvan, were identical, in order to capture the specificities of each organizational structure and were structured on the following dimensions: the hierarchy of the types of risk, the actions that may affect the unfolding of the event, the relationship between the type of risk and the unfolding of the event, the main steps that can be taken to mitigate the effects of potential risks, the identification of the elements of impact regarding the identified risk. The present study investigates activities that can determine risk situations in the case of the two festivals, representing the second level of statistical approach (which in this paper was indicated by letter B) in the hierarchy of the studied criteria. The data were collected at the end of the two festivals, in the autumn of 2018 (Trio Transilvan) and the spring of 2019 (Cluj

Modern ), so that the respondents were able to evaluate in a valid manner recent held editions.

Different probability scales, measured on either three (low, moderate, high) or five levels (very, fairly, a little, very probable or with an average probability) were used as the assessment tool, the probability boundaries indicating the perception of the interviewees and on the uncertainty of the mentioned risks. The statistical survey was carried out through the SPPS program [21], the identification of risk sources being considered decisive in the proper evaluation of the risks faced by the organizing institutions.

Results

To the question How likely are the following actions able to influence the unfolding of the event? there were delineated activities that in the years prior to 2019 were considered by the organizers as generating risk situations. These were related to the following circumstances.

Firstly, poor quality of implementation of the event (B1); it is known that the requirement for successful implementation of a festival led to the creation of numerous researches, implementation models and successful recipes have been identified, extreme cases have been examined to help avoid failures [19]. In the case of the two festivals, the respondents appreciated the level of implementation of the events as shown in Figure 1.

Fig. 1. Graphical comparison of evaluation related to poor implementation quality for the two festivals

For a clear conclusion, we compare the respondent response averages (Table 1).

Table 1

Descriptive statistics

Festival	N	Minimum	Maximum	Mean	Std. deviation
Trio Transilvan (B1)	30	1.00	4.00	2.9000	0.75886
Cluj Modern (B1)	30	1.00	3.00	2.2000	0.61026

According to the following tables, in the case of the Trio Transilvan festival, the poor quality of the event implementation may negatively influence the event’s unfolding to a lesser extent than the organizers of Cluj Modern consider (mean 2.9 is greater than 2.2, since 2.9 is closer to 3 equal to “medium probability” than 2.2 which is closer to 2 and equal to “60–80%probability”).

Secondly, the size of the event is wider than the expected number of attendees (B2) [22] (Fig. 2). The estimation of the number of participants was a conditional probability and was evaluated by the organizers of the two festivals as follows: regarding the Trio Transilvan festival, it is considered that the size of the event may negatively influence the performance to a lesser extent than do the organizers of the Cluj Modern festival (mean 3.3667 is greater than 2.6 according to Table 2).

In order to establish a certainty of the mentioned risks, a correlation between two items belonging to different groups of questions from the applied questionnaire was made: Poor quality of event implementation / Size of the event is greater than Number of expected attendees, concluding that in the case of the Cluj Modern festival there is a correlation, coefficient is 69% (Table 3 and 4).

Fig. 2. Graphical comparison event size and number of attendees in the two festivals

Table 2

Descriptive statistics

Festival	N	Minimum	Maximum	Mean	Std. deviation
Trio Transilvan (B2)	30	1.00	4.00	3.3667	0.76489
Cluj Modern (B2)	30	1.00	4.00	2.6000	1.03724

Table 3

Correlation matrix

			Cluj Modern (B1)	Cluj Modern (B2)
Spearman's rho	Cluj Modern (B1)	Correlation coefficient	1.000	0.693*
		Sig. (2-tailed)	0.0	0.000
		N	30	30
	Cluj Modern (B2)	Correlation coefficient	0.693*	1.000
		Sig. (2-tailed)	0.000	0.0
		N	30	30

Note: * Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).

Table 4

Characteristics of model coefficients

Model	Unstandardized coefficients		Standardized coefficients	t	Sig.
	B	Std. error	Beta
Constant	1.167	0.229	-	5.095	0.000
Cluj Modern (B2)	0.397	0.082	0.676	4.848	0.000

Note: Dependent Variable is the Cluj Modern (B1).

Here the variables evolve in the same direction, that is, small values that mean a “high probability of risk”, so if the number of expected attendees decreases, the quality of the event diminishes. The results are statistically significant, therefore the null hypothesis H0: “the test has no statistical significance” is rejected.

Thirdly, the number of attendees is low, below expectations (B3) [15] (Fig. 3). Estimating the number of participants at a festival is a frequently used assessment tool [23], based on which various marketing and management parameters are established. A comparison made on this indicator shows that in the case of the Trio Transilvan it is considered that the reduced number of attendees can negatively influence the performance of the event only to a small extent, less than considered by the organizers of the Cluj Modern festival (mean 3.33 33 is greater than 2.6667, Table 5).

Realizing a correlation between the number of attendees and the promotion of the event (an item from a different section of the questionnaire) a correlation of R equal to 47.8% was found in the case of the Cluj Modern Festival (Table 6 and 7).

Fig. 3. Graphical comparison of the risk related to the number of attendees in

the two festivals

Table 5

therefore reduced to the “greatly reduced risk” category) generates an increase in the value for the risk of a small number of attendees, i. e. the translation of this variable to the upper category of “unlikely risk.” The statistical significance” is rejected. It should be noted that there is no correlation of this type regarding the Trio Transilvan festival.

Another correlation that resulted in      Poor quality of event implementation / Low statistically significant data, a correlation of R       number of attendees (Table 8 and 9).

is equal to 41%, was achieved between the

It must be noted that if the role of the variables is reversed, i. e. the Number of attendees is reduced due to the implementation of the event; the results are not statistically significant.

Fourth, there are technical issues (sound amplification, image design, etc.) (B4). In organizing an event involving the production and unfolding of sounds, the preoccupations for achieving concert venues with good acoustics represent a priority [12]. The risk of technical problems is considered possible in most cases (Fig. 4). The situation of the two festivals highlights the fact that the technical problems may affect negatively the unfolding of the event, to a lesser extent in the case of the Trio Transilvan festival (mean 2.7 is greater than 2.5), the differences between the two festivals are not significant (Table 10).

A correlation was made between two

items of the survey: Poor quality of implementation of the event / Technical problems , resulting in a small correlation, where R is equal to 36.2% (Table 11).

Fig. 4. Graphical comparison on the risk of technical problems in the two festivals

Table 8

Correlation matrix

			Cluj Modern (B1)	Cluj Modern (B3)
Spearman's rho	Cluj Modern (B1)	Correlation coefficient	1.000	0.410*
		Sig. (2-tailed)	0.0	0.025
		N	30	30
	Cluj Modern (B3)	Correlation coefficient	0.410*	1.000
		Sig. (2-tailed)	0.025	0.0
		N	30	30

Note:* Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).

Table 9

Characteristics of model coefficients

Model	Unstandardized coefficients		Standardized coefficients	t	Sig.
	B	Std. error	Beta
Constant	1.638	0.252	-	6.494	0.000
Cluj Modern (B3)	0.211	0.086	0.419	2.444	0.021

Note: Dependent variable is Cluj Modern (B1).

Table 10

Descriptive statistics

Festival	N	Minimum	Maximum	Mean	Std. deviation
Trio Transilvan (B4)	30	1.00	4.00	2.7000	0.74971
Cluj Modern (B4)	30	1.00	4.00	2.5000	0.93772

Table 11

Correlation matrix

		Cluj Modern (B1)	Cluj Modern (B4)
Cluj Modern (B1)	Pearson Correlation	1	0.362*
	Sig. (2-tailed)	-	0.050
	N	30	30
Cluj Modern (B4)	Pearson Correlation	0.362*	1
	Sig. (2-tailed)	0.050
	N	30	30

Note: * Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).

Fifth, the human resource (employees / volunteers, B5) is insufficient (Fig. 5). The role and importance of the correct dimensioning of the human resource in organizing a festival has led to the creation of action strategies involving a considerable number of people. This parameter is an important part of event management, with managers playing an active role in managing their own staff. According to Table 12, the organizers of the Trio Transilvan festival consider that insufficient human resources are affecting with less probability the unfolding of the event if considered by the Cluj Modern.

Fig. 5. Comparison of the risk related to the insufficiency of human resources for the two festivals

Table 12

Descriptive statistics

Festival	N	Minimum	Maximum	Mean	Std. deviation
Trio Transilvan (B5)	30	1.00	4.00	2.5000	0.90019
Cluj Modern (B5)	30	1.00	4.00	2.0000	0.83045

And in conclusion, inadequacy of funds / costs is a risk frequently encountered in the cultural sector (B6), especially when fund-raising structures are not involved in organizing events (Fig. 6). The economic variable relates the sources of financing (e. g. public funding or community co-financing) to the sum of all the expenditure planned for the event [20]. In the case of the two events, there is a common opinion about the importance of financing, the Trio Transilvan considers that insufficient funds can negatively influence the unfolding of the event. For comparison, the means is 2.7333 that is greater than 2.2667 (Table 13).

Fig. 6. Graphical comparison between the risk of inadequacy of funds for the two festivals

Table 13

Descriptive statistics

Festival N Minimum Maximum Mean Std. deviation Trio Transilvan (B6) 30 1.00 4.00 2.7333 0.98027 Cluj Modern (B6) 30 1.00 5.00 2.2667 1.20153 resource, and the lowest risk is related to the size of the event, that is higher than the expected number of attendees.

For the Cluj Modern festival the averages on the five categories analysed statistically are approximately equal, being placed around a medium risk probability (in other words much more uniform than the other analysed festival), with the mention that here as well the risk of the human resource shortage is considered the highest, while the lowest risk is linked to the poor implementation of the event. It can be concluded that the organizers of the Cluj Modern festival have a better control in risk management.

For the management of festivals that mainly have a social and educational mission, it is therefore required to avoid riskgenerating factors such as:

• -    inviting performers who are to a lesser extent familiar with the show industry (such as the participants in the Trio Transilvan festival), the presence of professional artists

significantly reducing the risk of the artistic development of the event;

• -    investments are required in the human resource participating in the organization of an event, as they play an important role in the efficiency of the use of material, financial, informational resources;

• -    professionalizing the field of cultural management by employing specialists in fundraising as well as marketing, to avoid risks related to financing the event but also to the insufficient promotion of events.

However, it is recommended to apply a proactive management style, focused on designing and implementing measures based on the identification of possible risks before they materialize and cause devastating consequences for the unfolding of events.

In the future, the inclusion of the risk analysis in the cultural management practices could determine the limitation of their effects both financially and in the functionality and quality of the events.