Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki and the 2004 Athens Olympic Games

Case Study 2.1: Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki and the 2004 Athens Olympic Games

Joshua Knowlton

Organizational Leadership: OL 670-X2064-12TW2

Instructor: Michael Davis

January 22, 2012

Abstract

After successfully winning the bid for the 2004 Summer Olympic Games, Athens faced issues regarding meeting deadlines necessary to ensure flawless execution of the event. The Athens Organizing Committee suffered many setbacks and failures and as a result was approximately three years behind schedule. An offer was made to Gianna Angelopoulos who headed up the Athens Olympic bid committee to become the new head of the Athens Organizing Committee in hopes that she would be able to get Athens back on track for the upcoming games. However, many concerns surrounded this decision as this would prove to be no easy task.

In the early 1990’s Athens, Greece made an unsuccessful bid to host to 1996 Summer Olympics. Though these games were awarded to Atlanta, Athens learned a valuable lesson from this experience. The bid committee primarily focused on the right of the Greeks to the Olympics and less on the country’s ability to successfully host them (Guthrie and Katsarakis, 2007). When Gianna Angelopoulos was tasked with heading the Athens Olympic bid committee for the 2004 Olympic Games she decided to take a different approach. Angelopoulos felt that Athens should win the Olympic bid because it was simply the best city among its competitors. She explained that the philosophy of the new committee is completely different than the prior bid, stating that Athens wanted to win on merit, not by right. Angelopoulos knew that the committee would have to present a new vision of Athens, in other words a city that was being transformed for the next millennium. She stated that “we have learned from the mistakes of our previous bid. Athens is now ready, but we are not seeking a sympathy vote. We have the organizational...