Destination Leadership

The paper ‘Destination leadership and the issue of power’ by Blichfeldt, Hird and Kvistgaard (2014) discusses the concept of power theory in regard to leadership networks within destinations and offers insights into how decisions in various destinations are made and influenced by power. This essay will discuss the research paper by illustrating and critically analysing its process, key aspects and findings.

Blichfeldt, Hird and Kvistgaard (2014) contend that the power in a destination does not lie within its individual actors and stakeholders, but is rather embedded in the relations among them. Building up on that, these relations are not static, but evolve over time, thus making destination leadership networks extremely complex and unstable. Taking a DMO’s perspective, influence can be built and maintained with the help of different bases of power, namely reward, coercive, legitimate, referent and expert (Raven and French, 1958). Despite these bases, should a DMO aspire to become a leader of the destination, it must also foster relationships and interactions both with and among the individual destination stakeholders, thereby positioning itself in the middle of power networks. Hereafter, the authors further argue that it is imperative for DMOs to embrace and implement inclusive bottom up approaches in the regional development context, as these tactics are capable of facilitating a more sustainable tourism development within the respective destinations (Blichfeldt, Hird and Kvistgaard, 2014).

Considering the research process of the paper, the authors draw on their own experiences from more than 70 destinations over a 10-year period and make links to the theory using a rather non-conventional research method of vignettes. Bearing in mind the criteria of academic writing, the research process of the paper can be comprehensively criticised. Most importantly, the paper does not present a research question that is extremely important for guiding the research process (Smith, Thorpe and Jackson, 2015). Furthermore, due to the fact that the vignettes were anonymised, it is rather impossible to assess the credibility and reliability of the paper. One could thus argue that the vignettes could have been adjusted to fit into the concept. Building up on this, since the authors drew only on their own experiences, they might have forgotten important details or contexts of the situations. Especially external reliability is thus an issue, as it is impossible to replicate the settings illustrated by the vignettes (Bryman and Bell, 2011). This is further supported by the fact that the destinations featured in the study vary from regional to local levels and, hence, there is no consistency among them in regard to their scope. To increase the reliability, it would have been beneficial to consider more homogenous destinations or present multiple vignettes for each point made.

To sum up, the research paper provides a good literature review on the topic while being fairly interactive and easy to read. Furthermore, owing to its strong theoretical background, it offers an innovative perspective on the power issues in regard to destination leadership networks. However, due to the a rather non-conventional research process with the use of vignettes and a lack of a clear research question, the quality of the research from an academic point of view is rather doubtful. Bearing this in mind, a further research is certainly needed in order to prove or disprove the points made by the authors and test them in different context, thus facilitating an evolution of the concept of power in relationship to leadership networks within destinations.

References:

Blichfeldt, B. S., Hird, J. & Kvistgaard, P.  (2014). Destination leadership and the issue of power. Tourism Review, 69(1), 74-86.

Bryman, A. and Bell, E. (2011). Business Research Methods, 3rd edn. New York: Oxford University Press Inc.

Raven, B.H. and French, J.R.P. Jr (1958). Legitimate power, coercive power, and observability in social influence. Sociometry, 21(2), 83-97.

Smith, M. E., Thorpe, R. and Jackson, P. R. (2015). Management and Business Research, 5th edn. London: SAGE Publications Ltd.