Proactive Management of Olympic Legacies: Updating Munich 1972 in the Perspectives of Triple Helix Model

Abstract

The Triple-Helix (TH) model adopted in project management can be applied to identify and evaluate the three protagonists namely, companies, educational institutions and governments in the various mega-events staged in the Olympic Games.This study aims to analyse the performance of the three actors involved in the management of an Olympic legacy, i.e. the Olympic Park, 1972 Munich Olympic Games.The IOC recommendations along with specialised literature in the common theme were collected with the purpose of verifying the decision making in different scenarios.Further research involved i)analysis from the actual site of the Olympic Park in Munich ii) on-field research through an unstructured qualitative observation method and iii) interview with a semi-structured instrument.We interviewed executives from 3 sponsor companies, 2 management companies and a sponsorship contract management company.Conclusively, the university proved to be non-existent in our findings but the government acted as the largest subsidiary of the Olympic Park, prevailing the private company.In addition, the study also concluded that for the management of an Olympic legacy, a proactive path is required to attract partners for greater efficiency involving the TH players with a heavy focus on attracting company resources keeping in mind the partner’s needs in offering the programs that achieve common goals as well as clearly understanding the expected outcomes to align specific goals with the overall agenda of the project;visualising it as part of an enduring legacy of the mega-event.