Inter-organizational coordination in sustainable tourism: sector specificities and governance design options

Journal title ECONOMIA E SOCIETÀ REGIONALE
Author/s Elena Bonel
Publishing Year 2026 Issue 2026/2
Language Italian Pages 16 P. 29-44 File size 265 KB
DOI 10.3280/ES2026-002003
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Sustainable tourism requires interorganizational coordination to integrate heterogeneous actors. Stakeholder variety – a central concept in the economics of variety – is a precondition for achieving simultaneous economic, social, and environmental goals; managing this variety through appropriate mechanisms constitutes the foundation of sustainability. This paper presents a framework for designing interdependencies in tourism based on three variables: the nature of interdependencies, interest structures, and the degree of complexity. Three macroorganizational forms emerge social, bureaucratic, and proprietary networkswhich can be further defined into specific configurations with distinct coordination mechanisms. The framework is applied to numerous examples, providing decisionmakers with an operational tool to design contextualized relationships and move beyond ineffective prescriptive approaches.

Keywords: Tourism Governance, Interorganizational Coordination, Sustainable Tourism, Destination Management, Economics of Variety

Jel codes: L83, Q01, R58

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Elena Bonel, Coordinamento interorganizzativo nel turismo sostenibile: specificità settoriali e opzioni di progettazione in "ECONOMIA E SOCIETÀ REGIONALE " 2/2026, pp 29-44, DOI: 10.3280/ES2026-002003