into incremental10 and detrimental11 paradigms during the organization and staging phases accordingly. Even though at the bid stage, OCOGs do tend to establish environmental sustainability strategies, committees, policies and programs, an inadequate amount of preparation at the bid stage and organizational discontinuity between the bid and organiziational stages12 often result in poor implementation results during the organizational and staging phazes. The gap between initial bid committees' environmental pronouncements and OCOGs' day-to-day activities can be explained by OCOGs' limited resources, capabilities, and structural constraints. OCOGs' failure to comply with the IOC's sustainability guidelines can also be explained by the fact that they face no penalties for not meeting their own or the IOC's sustainability goals, the implementation of which is not legally enforced or overseen by the IOC (Paquette et al., 2011). VANOC was the first OCOG to officially adopt sustainability as a guiding principle of their operations (Holden et al. 2008). Importantly, it expanded its vision of sustainability to include not only the environment, but also social and economic opportunities that produced lasting legacies (VANOC, 2010). VANOC came up with its corporate definition of sustainability, corporate sustainability mission, vision, values and performance objectives. It set and measured key performance indicators (KPIs) to monitor its sustainability progress and issued periodic sustainability reports to report on its sustainability achievements and challenges to the public (VANOC, 2010). In each report, VANOC provided cumulative legacy highlights on each of its performance objectives (VANOC, 2010). Sustainability principles were ingrained in both VANOC's strategic long-term planning and daily operations, such as procurement, contractual relationships, and sponsorship deals (Coady 2012, Wilson 2012). VANOC defined sustainability as “managing the social, economic and environmental impacts and opportunities of our Games to produce lasting benefits, locally and globally.” Their mission was “to touch the soul of the nation and inspire the world by creating and delivering an extraordinary Olympic and Paralympic experience with lasting legacies.” Their vision was “a stronger Canada whose spirit is raised by its passion for sport, culture and sustainability.” Sustainability was among VANOC’s core values, along with team, creativity, trust and excellence. Its corporate sustainability objectives included: 1) accountability; 2) environmental stewardship and impact reduction; 3) social inclusion and responsibility; 4) aboriginal participation and collaboration; 5) economic benefits; 6) sport for sustainable living. Furthermore VANOC created a new sustainability governance model, reporting standards and a sustainable sport event tool kit for organizations undertaking major sporting events. (VANOC, 2010). 2.1.1.3 Host Cities On the one hand, for a host city, the Olympic Games is a burden of hosting a largescale one-off event putting enormous pressure on its accommodation stock, municipal services and security systems and surrounding natural environment. On the other hand, 10
An incremental CEM paradigm presupposes low-level management approach to reduce environmental impact A detrimental CEM paradigm presupposes that an organization fails to mitigate environmental damage caused by its operations and activities. 12 Bid Committees are replaced by OCOGs after the right to host the Games has been awarded to host cities. 11
22