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.