Coopetition for Sustainable Tourism Development in Postcolonial Contexts
: A case study of Amazigh Grand Agadir, Morocco

  • Wiam Id Boumsoud

Student thesis: Doctoral Thesis

Abstract

As has been well recognised, tourism plays a pivotal role in the quest to sustainability. In this, effective strategic stakeholders’ management is essential for sustainable tourism development. However, stakeholder management is a complicated activity, not least when performed for sustainable tourism in regions with developing economies and postcolonial background. In this context, coopetition offers a scholarly and practitioner approach for an effective balance towards successful stakeholders’ interactions. As yet however, the role of coopetition for sustainable tourism has received limited attention. Moreover, network level coopetition as well as tourism destinations as a network have been rarely assisted by research. Hence the aim of this study to understand tourism stakeholders coopetitive interactions for sustainable tourism development.

This qualitative case-study covers a novel context with an interesting story to be told and provides insights about an under-researched indigenous community, the North-African “Imazighen” indigenousness. Subsequently, the work provided interesting novel contributions to sustainable tourism, stakeholder management, coopetition, and postcolonialism literatures. In this, the research provided a stakeholder theory-based protocol for primary tourism products and services providers analysis. This encompasses four analysis stages which are identification, classification, engagement level assessment as an analysis basis of coopetition factors. Based on a thematic analysis of semi-structured in-depth interviews, key findings relate to the identification of four key factors enhancing and or deteriorating successful coopetition among tourism stakeholders in postcolonial developing economies. This includes governance, management, economic behaviour, and social behaviour.

Overall, the negative destructive impact of postcolonialism is found to generate interactions that are not conducive to successful coopetition for sustainable tourism development. This study indicates that to manage stakeholders’ interactions in a postcolonial context, it is important to recognise and acknowledge postcolonial legacies beyond the Western thinking and Eastern “Bedouin” influence. This can only be reached through allowing the dominated voices, the Imazighen” to speak-up about their unique “wicked problem” to get an accurate diagnosis for stakeholders and therefore effective coopetition for sustainable tourism development.
Date of Award22 Sep 2023
Original languageEnglish
SupervisorClaire McCamley (Main Supervisor) & Snow Wu (Co-Supervisor)

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