Events in VUCA Environments : Coping with the Covid-19 pandemic in the Swedish event industry

Background: During the Covid-19 pandemic, the event industry was one of the most economically affected industries in Sweden. Hence event companies that operated during the pandemic saw tremendous challenges in order to survive, which this research will elaborate further. The VUCA acronym environmental descriptions will be introduced along with how one can cope with those different environmental descriptions that are going to be addressed through the use of resilience. How they managed to cope with the Covid-19 pandemic while having intermittent revenue streams, will be described in this article. Aim: The aim of this thesis is to understand how project-oriented organizations with intermittent revenue streams in the Swedish event industry have coped with the Covid-19 pandemic and how resilience is achieved with the help of capabilities in the different environments of VUCA. Methodology: The primary method used was qualitative research of three companies within the event industry, to see how they were affected by the pandemic and what they did to cope with it. Individual semi-structured interviews were conducted with the CEOs of two companies and the COO of the third company. Findings: Companies that perceive themselves to be in a volatile environment need to have resilience that makes them anticipatory, adaptive and prepared to the externalities in the environment, to make them able to cope with it. Although not all companies in a volatile environment managed that in this research hence were less able to cope than others. Also, companies that are operating in an uncertain environment need to have responsive resilience which, in this research, the company was successful with. Another important factor to be able to cope with Covid-19 was networks, in other words, social capital. Which was a newly introduced concept to the study, once it was brought up during the interviews.