Abstract
Event planners and venue managers were ultimately held responsible for improper standards of control in any events that they are responsible with. The implementation of risk and safety procedures within the event site will not always preclude the defendant from legal liability. This paper explored the significance of legal and safety issues among event planners and venue managers in Malaysian event management industry. Despite a plethora of literature confirming that legal and safety issues are fundamental in event risk management, a thorough literature review has exposed the insufficiency of research of these intertwine areas. This empirical investigation has been taken in order to investigate the perceptions of event planners and venue managers in Malaysia towards legal and safety issues in planning and managing events. Due to the lack of empirical studies in this area, a qualitative exploratory case study approach using semi-structured interviews has been conducted aiming at exploring the importance of this topic, and to identify (and justify) several important legal acts (Law of Malaysia) within the event management context. The sample participants were recruited based on purposive sampling technique comprising of six event planners and three venue managers from various event related organisations in Malaysia. The data were analysed inductively using constant comparison method. The findings identify three major organisations responsible for the implementation and enforcement of legal and safety issues as well as eight Malaysian legal acts which regulates the event management industry namely the Occupational Safety and Health Act 1994 (Act 514), Factories and Machinery Act 1967 (Act 139), Environmental Quality Act 1974 (Act 127), Explosives Act 1957 (Act 207), Peaceful Assembly Act 2012 (Act 736), Fire Services Act 1988 (Act 341), Employees’ Social Security Act 1969 (Act 4) and Civil Aviation Act 1969 (Act 3).
Highlights
The Event Management Body of Knowledge (EMBOK) outlined risk management as one of the five important pillars of this multi-disciplinary field (Silvers, 2005)
It would incomplete for any topic related to the event risk management and safety to not be accompanied by the legislation and litigation aspect
Apart from the findings from informants, this part will briefly discuss the existing legislation situation for the event management industry in Malaysia. It will start by describing the roles of several governmental safety and health organizations that were responsible for the issues of risk and safety in Malaysia
Summary
The Event Management Body of Knowledge (EMBOK) outlined risk management as one of the five important pillars of this multi-disciplinary field (Silvers, 2005). Event managers need to be aware of the fact that “different laws and standards apply for different events especially regarding the location (venue or outdoors) and they comply with different authorities” (Eisenhauer, 2005) Based on this context, this article identified that the main legislation that governed the safety and health aspects of employees in Malaysia is the Occupational Safety and Health Act 1994 – Act 514. In terms of the general risk management and safety practices, the Malaysian government has established the Department of Occupational Safety and Health and the National Institute of Safety and Health, both under the umbrella of Ministry of Human Resource (Johnny, Yapat, & Janius, 2013) Both of these agencies were responsible to protect and safeguard the health and safety practice across all sectors and industries including the event management industry.
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