Field-configuring Event Research Articles

Field-Configuring Places: Unpacking the role of place in field evolution

The paper theorises how a place can influence the emergence and evolution of an exchange field. Specifically, we examine the Society for Arts and Technology building in Montreal, focusing on its geographical location, material form, and meanings as their adaptations over time. Our findings identify three types of influence that the SAT building has on the field of projection mapping: supporting the community, fostering interorganisational relationships, and catalysing innovation. These influences manifest in distinct ways depending on the field’s evolution phase. We contribute to the literature on field configuration by developing the concept of the field-configuring place and distinguishing it from the established concept of the field-configuring event. Additionally, we extend the institutional dynamics literature by showing how a place can support the configuration of a field from its emergence, based on its characteristics that can be adapted while providing stability. This study thus underlines the cross-fertilisation between the literature on field configuration and that on places.

Field Configuration Around a Major Sport Event: Boundary Work and Implications for Perpetuation of “The Legacy Rhetoric”

This research analyzed the Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games (GC2018) as a field configuring event (FCE). The research develops understanding around the key actors, processes, and products of field configuration prompted in the host community of a major event. A qualitative single case study research design was used that relied on interview data, participant observations, and organizational documents. Findings demonstrated how boundary work by GC2018 field-level governance actors yielded a focus on achieving legacy outcomes for a select few host community stakeholders. This study adds new insight on the persistence of “the legacy rhetoric” in event management. Recognition of the exclusionary nature of boundary work associated with field governance around major events emerged as a key prerequisite for shifting thinking beyond the legacy rhetoric and towards a more holistic leveraging perspective.

Affective capitalism and the (new) entrepreneurial mood: Slush as a field configuring event

This article examines start-up entrepreneurialism and provides insights into the configurations of affective capitalism. The empirical case explored in this article is the Slush Conference, which promotes start-up entrepreneurialism. The data were gathered by ethnographic methods, including on-site observations, and complemented by diverse materials such as social media content and newspaper coverage of the event. Drawing upon our detailed analysis, we concluded that Slush comprises overlapping elements that constitute a novel kind of entrepreneurial enterprise: an emphasis on affective atmospheres, the articulation of an alleged affective morality and a view of affects as directly productive. These three aspects together further shed light on the nuanced operations of mood, which we consider an important manifestation of collective affects. In particular, mood plays a significant role in the shifting terrains of Nordic welfare states, where tensions between public expertise and private innovations can be identified. Furthermore, we argue that Slush is a field-configuring event that has a crucial impact on the evolution of start-up entrepreneurialism by constituting the Finnish landscape of affective capitalism.

Small Film Festivals Surviving the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic was a major challenge for film festival organizers, who had to resort to online platforms to showcase films they had selected. While virtual film festivals did not offer the same experience, being deprived of the opportunity to gather people in a festive atmosphere, they provided a fairly accessible solution that enabled audiences to watch films they would have missed otherwise. Even major and economically stable festivals, such as South by Southwest (SXSW), decided to cancel; and not all film festivals embraced the opportunities provided by online platforms. Responses to the pandemic were as diverse as the six thousand film festivals organized on average each year. Small nonprofit film festivals, however, tend to be more vulnerable than large-scale events. When the pandemic was at its climax in 2020, their economic sustainability was at stake. This article focuses on Cine Las Americas, a small community-based Latino and Indigenous film festival that takes place in Austin, Texas. Based on interviews of members of the executive and programming team, on research about the history of the festival, and on the experience of the 2020 “Virtual Showcase,” it shows that solidarity between the festival and a wide range of local organizations played a great role in its capacity to survive this critical time. To retrace the festival’s history, the article draws inspiration from organizational theory, illustrating that Cine Las Americas became a field-configuring event (FCE) in the city of Austin, to the point where the friendship that its successive organizers, who have showed crucial adaptation skills over the years, had secured with local partners contributed to its survival.

WHY SHOULD YOU CARE ABOUT THE LINK BETWEEN SPORTS, AS AN INTANGIBLE CULTURAL HERITAGE AND GLOBAL SUSTAINABLE HEALTH DEVELOPMENT (UN SDG3)?

Introduction. The truth is I did not care until the global pandemic and fake news in the media MADE me care! Why? Because UN SDGs are vital to the survival of human life, indeed all lives, on the Anthropocene. What better time to research this as when the whole planet was locked down by one virus? This is a working paper using a subset of the data from a larger longitudinal study. The purpose of this paper was to investigate key questions around the transmission of Sports as a major domain of Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH). Aim of the study. The study shed light on the “spontaneous and extemporary” way High Performance Sports/eSports ICH-creators transmit to its global community and in an unscripted and unprompted way, included in their transmission process contents that enriched the trust-building aspects of Sustainable strategic health development (SDG3). I isolated and studied this phenomenon by collecting data at an eSports Field configuring event (FCE), studying my subjects who were the highest-ranking world champions of their generation. Material and methods. Through an abductive qualitative analysis of “living culture” at a major FCE, studying the theories of a “living culture”-transmission (ICH) in the field, a paradoxical framework inquisites the unscripted trust-building commentaries regarding the health services provided at large sports venues, during ICH-creators’ Live global broadcast. Results. The initial findings are based on field data collected at high-level e-sports FCE event (World Chess championship 2020). My ICH-transmission framework cross-validated in practice, the implications that ICH like Sports/eSports have ties with UN SDG3 in strategic trans-disciplinary way. Conclusions. This research address theoretical assumptions around “tangibility/intangibility” of cultural manifestations. This will contribute long-term to the study of paradox in creative ICH-transmissions. In the short-term, the knowledge improves UN SDG Index-metrics for Sustainable Health (SDG3). My research challenges assumptions around the requirement of material manifestation of an ICH e.g., a tangible sport played intangibly as an e-sport can still transmit important wellbeing narratives in unscripted and vibrant ICH manifestations. When critically examined the ICH-transmission process of an eSport contributed to sustainable health promotion agenda by disarming polarity (conflict) caused by viral anti-vax disinformation campaigns; potentially steering the fearful towards an SDG-centric wellbeing mind-frame amidst an uncertainty of Sports and eSports event in the middle of a global health crisis.

When Alt Right Enters Our Living Room: Contesting and Shifting Fields at a Field-Configuring Event

This paper investigates how a field-configuring event is transformed from configuring an exchange field to configuring an issue field through mediatization. It is based on an extensive longitudinal...

Educational Potential of Animated Films in Poland

The paper describes events which are focused on Polish animation, with special regards to their educational values. The thesis refers to the importance of the Polish Film Institute, higher education, film workshops and film festivals for Polish animations. The most important part of the paper describes animation film festivals. Film festivals are portrayed as the most extensive educational platform, because of which the whole paper centres on an understanding of the issue through festival studies. The author evokes theories of the field configuring events by Bernard Leca, Charles-Clemens Rüling and Dominique Puthod. In the paper the Polish animation film scene is described as heterogeneous, however, filmmakers who make animations are evolving a coherent vision of it. Helpful in this process is the Polish Animation Producers Association. In the final part of the paper the author focuses on O!PLA. The Festival of Polish Animation. This event can be interpreted as a something more than a field-configuring event, and described as a communicator of the convergence of expertise (term of Grzegorz D. Stunża and associates).

Direction, not destination: Institutional work practices in the face of field-level uncertainty

Though field-level uncertainty represents a common challenge, research seldom addresses how institutional work that aims to influence institutional change occurs in the face of uncertainty. We study institutional work practices in a field beset with high uncertainty. Focusing on a field-configuring event in the semiconductor industry, we show how institutional work is possible through practices of dealing with uncertainty that do not eliminate the basic uncertainty but nevertheless configure the field and institutionalize a common direction without specifying a final destination. We find evidence of the open-endedness and collectiveness of institutional work and we contribute to the microfoundations of institutional theory conceptualizing a set of four practices of dealing with field-level uncertainty purposively but not purposefully, i.e., bootstrapping, roadmapping, leader-picking, and issue-bracketing. We highlight the reciprocal relationship between practices and uncertainty, focus on the coordination of institutionalization, and distinguish between events in fields marked by high versus low uncertainty.

Making the ‘handmade’ bike and trying to make a living: market objects, field-configuring events and some limits to market making

ABSTRACTIn line with growing interest in craft and maker economies, I examine the resurgence of handmade bicycle fabricators (“framebuilders”) in the U.S. since the early 2000s. I provide an account of one of the driving elements of this framebuilding renaissance, the North American Handmade Bicycle Show, considered as a “field-configuring event” through – and around – which forms of market-making and market object stabilization processes were achieved. I focus in particular on the way in which the “handmade bike” as a market object was stabilized and defined. Expanding on the “markets as practice” literature, I take up a larger concern with how these market-making and field-configuring dynamics connect to the material position of those within the field and their pursuit of livelihood. I find that, paradoxically, the particular successful stabilization of the “handmade” bicycle achieved around the show was difficult to sustain as a business model for many framebuilders.

From temporary market to temporary cluster: evolution of the Canton Fair

ABSTRACTThis paper shows how the nature of a trade fair can change over time from a temporary marketplace and field-configuring event towards a temporary cluster and complex learning space. Drawing from market-oriented and knowledge-based conceptualizations of trade fairs that analyze the different dimensions, interaction processes between participants and impacts of these events, this paper suggests that trade fairs are highly flexible organizational forms that need to be analyzed through integrated trade and knowledge perspectives. This argument is illustrated in a qualitative case study of the Canton Fair in southern China.

Networks and Institutionalization: A Neo-structural Approach

Abstract This paper is the text prepared for the keynote address of the EUSN 2017 conference in Mainz, Germany. A short presentation of concepts reflects in part the foundations of neo-structural sociology (NSS) and its use of social and organisational network analyses, combined with other methodologies, to better understand the roles of structure and culture in individual and collective agency. The presentation shows how NSS accounts for institutional change by focusing on the importance of combined relational infrastructures and rhetorics. Specific characteristics of institutional entrepreneurs who punch above their weight in institutionalization processes are introduced for that purpose, particularly the importance of multi-status oligarchs, status heterogeneity, high-status inconsistencies, collegial oligarchies, conflicts of interests and rhetorics of relative/false sacrifice. Two empirical examples illustrate this approach. The first case focuses on a network study of the Commercial Court of Paris, a 450-year-old judicial institution. The second case focuses on a network study of a field-configuring event (the so-called Venice Forum) lobbying for the emergence of a new European jurisdiction, the Unified Patent Court, and its attempt to create a common intellectual property regime for the continent. For sociologists, both examples involve “studying up”: they are cases of public/private joint regulation of markets bringing together these ingredients of institutionalization. The conclusion suggests future lines of research that NSS opens for the study of institutionalization, in particular using the dynamics of multi-level networks. One of the main issues raised by this approach is its contribution to the study of democratic deficits in a period of intense institutional change in Europe.

Collegial oligarchy and networks of normative alignments in transnational institution building

This paper presents a combined relational and cultural approach to transnational institution building by focusing on a network analysis of a small collegial oligarchy and normative alignments among its peers. To contribute to a theory of institutionalization, we propose hypotheses about whom professionals as institutional entrepreneurs are likely to select as members of their collegial oligarchy, about the role of social networks among them in identifying these leaders, and about the costs of alignments on these leaders’ normative choices. We test these hypotheses using mainly Exponential Random Graph Models (ERGMs) applied to a dataset including network information and normative choices collected at the so-called Venice Forum – a field-configuring event that was central in creating and mobilizing a network of European patent judges for the construction of a new transnational institution, the European Unified Patent Court. We track normative alignments on the collegial hierarchy in this network of judges and their divergent interpretations of the contemporary European patent. Highlighting this under-examined articulation of relational infrastructures and cultural framing in transnational institutionalization shows how Northern European forms of capitalism tend to dominate in this institutionalization process at the expense of the Southern European forms. It also helps reflect on the usefulness of analyses of small networks of powerful players in organizational societies, where power and influence are highly concentrated.

Crossing Boundaries: Exploring the London Olympics 2012 as a Field-Configuring Event

The paper seeks to unravel the field-configuring capacity of Olympic Games, as a large-scale event located at the intersection of several organizational fields. The initial argument is that the Olympics, besides being a cyclically recurring “tournament ritual” in the sports field, constitute a singular flagship project in those fields connected to the preparation and legacy implementation of the event. Conceptually the paper connects, therefore, the literature on field-configuration with a particular branch of project management research. Empirically it builds upon selected results of a major case study of the London Summer Games in 2012, in particular of the massive program of venue construction and urban regeneration linked to this event. The authors maintain that the cross-field-configuring capacity of a global and publicly visible venture like the Olympics is based on the interaction of its public prominence and the performance of involved actors. However, the configuration across field boundaries exhibits a specific temporality. For one thing, this is based on the singularity of the flagship projects within their fields. For another, it refers to the timescale in which the actual performance takes place.

On Melting Summits: The Limitations of Field-Configuring Events as Catalysts of Change in Transnational Climate Policy

Although field-configuring events have been highlighted as catalysts of institutional change, scholars still know little about the specific conditions that allow such change to occur. Using data from a longitudinal study of United Nations climate conferences, we analyze how regular and high-stakes events in an event series interacted in producing and preventing institutional change in the transnational climate policy field. We uncover variations in event structures, processes, and outcomes that explain why climate conferences have not led to effective solutions to combat human-induced global warming. Results in particular highlight that growing field complexity and issue multiplication compromise the change potential of a field-configuring event series in favor of field maintenance. Over time, diverse actors find event participation useful for their own purposes, but their activity is not connected to the institutions at the center of the issue-based field. In discussing how events configuring a field are purposefully staged and enacted but also influenced by developments in the field, our study contributes to a more complete understanding of field-configuring events, particularly in contested transnational policy arenas.

Talking to the wind: the strategic practices of marginal actors at a Field-configuring Event

This paper examines the strategic practices of marginal actors in Field-configuring Events in the context of a Multilateral Environmental Agreement. In order to do that, the empirical study is base...

Practices of Institutional Work at a Field-configuring Event

The conditions that shape how institutional work is practically performed are understudied. This paper analyzes what type of agency and which practices of institutional work occur in the face of un...

The Decline and Fall of the Paris Salon : a Study of the Deinstitutionalization Pro cess of a Field Configuring Event in the Cultural Activities

This article examines the deinstitutionalization of a Field Configuring Event (FCE) and the consequences of this deinstitutionalization for an organizational field. To this end, we carried out a historiographical study of the deinstitutionalization of the Paris Salon. This pivotal FCE was the central event of the Beaux-Arts field in France for over two centuries before its progressive decline at the end of the 19th Century. From a theoretical point of view, our results show that the deinstitutionalization process of FCEs is the result of the interaction and dynamics of several factors, notably, the internal contradictions of the FCE, the emergence of alternatives resulting from institutional developments, and the constitution of a critical mass, followed by the development of institutional pressures that encourage the abandonment of the FCE. This study also enables us to analyze the impact of an FCE’s decline on the structure, distribution and nature of power, and especially on temporality within a field. Finally, it contributes to the study of the deinstitutionalization process in general. From a managerial point of view, this study suggests that promoters must organize themselves to integrate innovation, in order to avoid the decline of the FCE.

Discourse, Field-Configuring Events, and Change in Organizations and Institutional Fields: Narratives of DDT and the Stockholm Convention

We explore the discursive processes through which a field-configuring event can change an institutional field and organizations. Our case study is of the United Nations conference leading to the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, which established new global regulations for several dangerous chemicals but excepted the insecticide DDT. Our study highlights how the production, distribution, and consumption of texts in the multiple discursive spaces generated by a field-configuring event allow new narratives to be told, and how, in turn, these narratives can lead to change in an institutional field and in organizations through three mechanisms: domination, interpretation, and translation.