Professor Karen Smith

Associate Dean Teaching & Learning
Wellington School of Business and Government

karen.smith@vuw.ac.nz
RH 917, Rutherford House, 23 Lambton Quay

Karen is Professor of Tourism Management in the School of Management, and Associate Dean (Learning and Teaching) for Wellington School of Business and Government.

Research

Much of Karen’s research concerns volunteers and their management in the tourism and events sectors, and more broadly in non-profit organisations in areas as diverse as health, emergency management, and conservation. She is interested in why and how people give time to support a range of causes, and how organisations in the community and voluntary sector (and beyond) respond to and maximise the impact of these donations of time.

Specific areas of research interest include event volunteering, best practice in volunteer management, future studies (specifically the future of events and festivals, and the future of volunteering, philanthropy and the not-for-profit sector), event management, literary and film tourism, and student employability and co-curricular activities. A recent research project funded by the International Olympic Committee evaluated the volunteering infrastructure legacy of the Sydney 2000 and London 2012 Olympic Games.

Teaching

Karen has a passion for teaching and received a University Teaching Excellence Award in 2013. She mainly teaches on the undergraduate and postgraduate tourism management programmes and supervises Masters and PhD students. In 2014 Karen completed a University Learning and Teaching Fund project with Wellington Careers and Employment investigating enhancing student employability through extra-curricular activities and the Wellington Plus Programme.

Karen leads the Faculty’s MBA Non-profit Advisory Project which has involved students working with over fifty local and national organisations on a variety of strategic and operational challenges. If you are a not-for-profit organisation who is interested in being involved, please contact Karen.

Engagement

Karen is First Vice-Chair of CAUTHE (Council for Australasian Universities Tourism and Hospitality Education).

She is a previous Chairperson of Volunteering New Zealand, volunteers as a Wellington City Ambassador, and regularly works with not-for-profit organisation to deliver professional development training to those managing volunteers and promoting volunteerism. She also puts her event and volunteering knowledge into practice in her role as event director of the annual Thorndon Fair.

Karen recently completed her term as co-Editor of the Third Sector Review journal and is an Editorial Board Member of the Journal of Vacation Marketing, The Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management, and Third Sector Review.

Areas of potential PhD supervision

Volunteer Management (in tourism and events, and more broadly in non-profit and public-sector organisations)
Event Management
Human Resource Management in Tourism
Tourism Distribution Channels

PhD supervision

Karen is currently supervising Solmaz Nazari Orakani and Guoyang Chen.

Recent publications

Books

Smith, K.A., Lockstone-Binney, L., Holmes, K. and T. Baum (2014) (Eds.) Event Volunteering: International perspectives on the event volunteering experience. Routledge Advances in Event Research Series. Routledge.

Yeoman, I., Robertson, M., McMahon-Beattie, Backer, E. and Smith, K.A. (2014) (Eds.) The Future of Events and Festivals. Routledge Advances in Event Research Series. Routledge.

Other publications

Yeoman, I., Robertson, M., McMahon-Beattie, Backer, E. and Smith, K.A. (2014) (Eds.) The Future of Events and Festivals. Routledge Advances in Event Research Series. Routledge.

Cordery, C., Smith, K.A. and Berger, H. ‘Future scenarios for the charity sector in 2045’ Public Money and Management, Special Issue: The Charity Sector in a Changing World, 37, 3 (2017), pp.189-196. Doi: 10.1080/09540962.2017.1281662

Daellenbach, K., Dalgliesh-Waugh, C. and Smith, K.A. ‘Community resilience and the multiple levels of social change’ Journal of Social Marketing, 6, 3 (2016). pp. 240-257. Doi: 10.1108/JSOCM-06-2015-0032

Lockstone-Binney, L., Holmes, K., Smith, K., Baum, T. and Storer, C. ‘Are all my volunteers here to help out? Clustering event volunteers by their motivations’ Event Management, 19 (2015), pp.461-477. Doi: 10.3727/152599515X14465748512605

Robertson, M., Yeoman, I., Smith, K.A. and McMahon-Beatty, U. ‘Technology, society, and visioning the future of music festivals’ Event Management, 19 (2015), pp.567-587. Doi: 10.3727/152599515X14465748774001

Cordery, C., Smith, K.A. and Proctor-Thomson, S. ‘Staff and volunteers’ perceptions of the Volunteer Programme: an alternative use of the Net Benefits Index’ Voluntary Action Research, 6, 2 (2015), pp.173-191.