Project Management in Mega Events: The Case of 2004 Olympic Games

According to the international bibliography, the Olympic Games are considered as a mega event. As such, the implementation of management techniques is necessary for its organization. In addition, when such an event it is organized successfully, as it was the case for the O.G “Athens 2004”, it is interesting to investigate whether basic techniques such as “project management”, it was utilized or not, which it was the aim of this study. The data were collected through interviews of 5 managers at different organizational level. The questions were coming from the project management model “PRINCE 2”. The results were derived through qualitative analysis of the answers to the eight research questions. This approach revealed that the Olympic Games in Athens where based in project management from the programming phase to implementation of the event in every division of work. Never the less, some differentiations in the implementation of the project management elements where obvious that were credited to the Greek mentality. Also, some results lead us to topics for future study.