Neema Daniel Kaaya is defending her thesis for the degree philosophiae doctor (PhD) at the University of South-Eastern Norway.
The doctoral work has been carried out at the USN School of Business in the program Marketing Management.
- Read the thesis here (to be published)
You are invited to follow the trial lecture and the public defence.
Summary
This dissertation aims to understand interorganizational networks among destination management organizations (DMOs) in Norway in promoting the sustainability and resilience of destinations and destination actors.
DMOs work for and represent local destination actors. DMOs are consistently embedded in networks with other DMOs reflecting opportunities to share resources and information to achieve individual and collective goals.
Therefore, DMOs’ engagement in interorganizational networks with other DMOs reflect the access to, and the allocation of information and resources needed to potentially promote destinations and destination actors’ sustainability and resilience.
In the dissertation, I use both a network structural approach (using quantitative procedures to measure DMOs' network architecture and measure how these patterns impact destination actors' sustainability certification status), and a network relational approach (qualitatively exploring how DMOs' network relational processes impact DMOs' ability to support local destination actors' sustainability and resilience practices).
Through these empirical studies, with participants from DMOs in Norway, this research shows:
- DMOs’ direct and indirect network ties influence the extent to which DMOs obtain sustainability certification from both Innovation Norway and Eco-Lighthouse. Moreover, the dense subgroups in the DMO network, i.e., the extent to which the DMO's immediate ties are also connected, show a significant relationship with sustainability certification status with Innovation Norway.
- The qualitative study shows that relational network processes in the DMOs network impact destination actors' sustainability and resilience practices. These are:
- Group certification - the practice of several DMOs obtaining sustainability certification under a common umbrella.
- Sustainability training and development,
- Knowledge sharing and learning – impact both destination firms sustainability and resilience.
- Imitation and spread of best practices related to sustainability and resilience.
- Goal congruence - efforts to achieve compatible objectives in sustainability and resilience.
Furthermore, the empirical study shows that public stakeholders and institutional environmental factors impact destination firms' sustainability and resilience practices.
The findings of this dissertation offer valuable insights into the importance of network connections to tourism stakeholders such as DMOs, governmental stakeholders, local communities, local tourism providers, marketing researchers, and managers.
The findings particularly provide a deeper understanding of the DMO-to-DMO network and show that other tourism stakeholders joint efforts with DMOs are essential in promoting sustainability and resilience and achieving the common goals of destination development and the tourism sector at large.