Business School researchers win Literarti award

Professor David Bamford and Dr Benjamin Dehe of the Business School’s have been awarded a Highly Commended paper award as a result of innovative research into the Olympics 2012 held in London. The co-authored paper 'Service quality at the London 2012 games - a paralympics athlete’s survey' was published in the International Journal of Quality & Reliability Management and was selected by the journal’s editorial team as a Highly Commended paper in the 2017 Emerald Literati Network Awards for Excellence.

The focus of the paper was in reporting on aspects of service quality at the London 2012 Paralympic Games, from the perspective of the athletes. The research was conducted amongst 250 athletes at the games, with a set of ten themes regarding service quality that formed the foundation for the research process. These themes were: the paralympics village; competition venues; transport; catering; volunteers and staff; ceremonies; pre-game information; medical and healthcare; arrivals and departures, and anti-doping.

The paper provides a valuable contribution towards the planning and organisation of similar large-scale sporting events, as Professor Bamford explains; "This is the first paper to identify and synthesize aspects of sports 'mega event' service quality from the athletes viewpoint and informs how well designed, organised and managed the London 2012 Olympic Games were.  Assessing the athletes perceptions of the operational resources design and delivery directly influenced design aspects of the Rio 2016 Games and will be utilised for Tokyo 2020."