Abstract
As has been suggested, for a worldwide high-profile venture such as the Olympic Games, there is a pattern of prioritising of particular elites over the local workforce. In this chapter, I take this hypothesis empirically on trial through conducting interviews and LinkedIn examination to determine the career characteristics of those involved in running the 2012 Games, and its legacy through their occupational trajectories. The findings outline that at the professional level, working for the London Olympic Games 2012 meant being involved in an interwoven but dynamic network of worldwide experts in the performance of ‘non-routine’ tasks. Therefore, London 2012 was not only about testing the capabilities of athletes but was also a platform for manifesting the competence of experts and firms. The exercising of extreme caution in bringing the ‘right people’ on board in order to avoid any delivery risks resulted in an exclusive network based on ‘you know how’.
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Notes
- 1.
Symbolic capital is a term used in sociological enterprise of Pierre Bourdieu (1989). His ideology has been discussed in theoretical framework in Chap. 4.
- 2.
The ‘protean career’ is one in which a person manages their own career development by: (1) monitoring and assessing the job market; (2) anticipating future developments, trends and industry shifts, (3) gaining the necessary skills, qualifications, relationships and assets to meet these shifts, and (4) adapting in order to thrive in an ever-changing workplace (Block 2019; De Vos and Soens 2008).
- 3.
Boundaryless careers, generally, are the opposite of organisational careers, that is, careers that move across the boundaries of separate employers.
- 4.
Transnational global capitalist class (TCC or TNC) is that segment of the world economy that represents transnational capital, and is unconstrained by national boundaries (Sklair 2001). The transnational capitalist class is organized in four overlapping fractions: TNC executives, globalizing bureaucrats, politicians and professionals, consumerist (merchants and media) (Sklair 2001, p. 514).
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Vadiati, N. (2020). The Career Trajectory of ‘Men of Delivery’. In: The Employment Legacy of the 2012 Olympic Games. Mega Event Planning. Palgrave Pivot, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-0598-0_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-0598-0_6
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