Differences of perception between private and public officers in an organizing committee concerning stakeholders of an international sporting event

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the perception of public and private officers of stakeholder at the PyeongChang Winter Olympic Games 2018. This event was selected as the subject of this research as it is the most recent mega-scale international sporting event and, given that the organizing committee (OC) is currently operating, it afforded a unique opportunity to investigate the staff of the organization. To clarify the research questions, this research identified stakeholders of Olympic Games. Design/methodology/approach: The research questions were examined by a stakeholder analysis that measured and compared perceptions conducted according to the stakeholder theory (Freeman, 2010) and previous research (Naraine et al., 2016). Findings: This study identifies eight stakeholders of the 2018 Winter Olympic Games: the OC, the International Olympics Committee, National Olympic Committee, central government, local government, media, sponsors and non-government organizations. The authors pointed out that public officers are more sensitive to the opinions and movements of community members than private staff. Conversely, the authors found that the private staffs regard the media and influential stakeholders as more important compared with public officers. Originality/value: Based on the findings from the Olympics committee, this study contributes to the academic literature related to sporting events and their stakeholders by providing the most up-to-date identification of stakeholders.