Our work pursues a twin aim. Firstly, we explore the influence of organizational size on innovations in museums as well as its impact on museums' economic, market and social performance. Secondly, we analyse how the (publicprivate) funding of such organizations impacts innovation and performance. The empirical work is based on information from a survey of 491 museums (British, French, Italian and Spanish). We find that museum size does prove relevant in the commitment to engage in innovation but that public funding of museums does not encourage innovation. We also highlight the importance of the explanatory power of the type of funding on the performance of these cultural organizations. This research also reveals how organizational and technological innovations as well as innovation in value creation in museums enhance economic, market and social performance.
Abstract.The context in which museums operate has evolved considerably over the last few decades, while the challenges they face have increased. The current need for museums to augment their own revenue and improve their performance coupled with the transformation of cultural models towards more experiential services has led many to adopt a consumer orientation in an effort to make museums and their collections increasingly accessible to visitors. This visitor orientation is more than just a wish to bring culture closer to the public, but rather a desire to understand visitors' demands and thus adapt to their expectations. This paper seeks to explore the relation between visitor orientation and performance in museums.Specifically, the study focuses on technological innovation and tradition as two alternative strategies to respond to visitor expectations. An empirical study was conducted for a sample of 491 European museums. Evidence is found to support the notion that the impact of visitor orientation on economic and market performance depends on how visitors' needs are perceived and on museums' commitment to either innovation or tradition and custody. Whereas technological innovation has a positive impact on revenue and economic performance, the impact of custodial orientation is negative. Custodial orientation only proves effective in market terms in large museums but does not prove effective in economic terms, for either small or large museums. This paper offers a guide as to 2 how to deal with visitor orientation in cultural and heritage organizations.Although an orientation to innovate geared towards satisfying visitor needs would seem the logical way for museums to increase visitor numbers, an approach involving too much innovation, often leading museums to becoming shows, has been widely criticized.
Support needs assessment instruments and recent research related to this construct have been more focused on adults with intellectual disability than on children. However, the design and implementation of Individualized Support Plans (ISP) must start at an early age. Currently, a project for the translation, adaptation and validation of the supports intensity scale for children (SIS-C) is being conducted in Spain. In this study, the internal structure of the scale was analyzed to shed light on the nature of this construct when evaluated in childhood. A total of 814 children with intellectual disability between 5 and 16 years of age participated in the study. Their support need level was assessed by the SIS-C, and a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), including different hypotheses, was carried out to identify the optimal factorial structure of this scale. The CFA results indicated that a unidimensional model is not sufficient to explain our data structure. On the other hand, goodness-of-fit indices showed that both correlated first-order factors and higher-order factor models of the construct could explain the data obtained from the scale. Specifically, a better fit of our data with the correlated first-order factors model was found. These findings are similar to those identified in previous analyses performed with adults. Implications and directions for further research are discussed.
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