Edinburgh Napier University

  Edinburgh's festivals have traditionally been world renowned for their eclecticism. As their number grew and reach widened the coordination of the festivals became a complex and demanding organisational task for managers, and venue owners/operators introduced greater professionalism to tackle the challenges. With an increasing number of stakeholders and growing national and international competition the festival venue operators embraced managerialism in organisational processes. Economic realism (rather than social welfare) was upgraded to inform the ethos in any public spending and privatisations in services were introduced in line with galloping commercialisation in leisure consumption. Edinburgh‟s festival venue organisers have not been immune to rapid structural changes in Britain. The paper seeks to 1) evaluate the circumstances faced by a major festival venue operator as perceived by its key stakeholders and 2) discuss the implications of these perceptions on the organisations future growth and development. The case study methodology employed allows the in-depth analysis of the venue organisation‟s goals and risks jeopardising their achievement as well as perceived structural and environmental circumstances and a holistic consideration of the strategic options available in light of benchmarking data from the other institutions. The results reveal the nature of stakeholders‟ assumptions and the variety of approaches evidenced in the broader institutional environment of the venue organisation.