Projects, institutional logics and institutional work practices: The case of the Lucca Comics & Games Festival

© 2018 Elsevier Ltd, APM and IPMA This paper investigates the relations between festivals and their institutional settings, and how these relations shape festival management. We analyze institutional logics and work practices in a complex project, Lucca Comics & Games, which is the biggest festival dedicated to fantasy culture in Italy. Our results, based on archival research, media coverage and interview data, reveal the recursive interplay between institutional logics and work practices for institutional maintenance. We argue that the study of festivals is essential to understanding key aspects of project-based organizing more generally. In this regard, the maintaining of institutions must be distinguished from stability or the absence of change and consideration of historical and contextual analysis, and multiple tensions that occur due to competing institutional logics can open up new ways of thinking for prospective research. We also demonstrate that future research can use institutional work practices for understanding institutional maintenance in recurring temporary organizations.

Publication year:2019