Ownership, organization structure and public service provision: the case of museums

Abstract

This article provides an empirical investigation of the effects of the ownership and organizational structure on the performance of cultural institutions. More specifically, we consider how museums are effective in their function of disseminating culture to audiences and contributing to the local development. By exploiting a unique data set based on the 2011 census of Italian museums, we develop indexes of accessibility, visitors' experience, web visibility and promotion of the local cultural context. Using count data models, we regress such measures on the type of organization. We distinguish between governmental museums, public museums whose administration is either outsourced or has financial autonomy and private museums. We control for the most salient characteristics of a museum, competition pressure and some proxies of potential audience. Our evidence shows that private museums, public museums with financial autonomy and outsourced museums outperform public museums run as sub-units of culture departments. This paper contributes to the cultural economics, policy and public administration literature by adding insights into the effect of outsourcing and administrative decentralization in the public cultural sector.

Spatial dependence in museum services: an analysis of the Italian case

“…The organizational structure of museums also matters, as autonomous (AUTON) and outsourced museums (OUTS) provide more services as well. Overall, the results for the ownership type and organizational mode are fully in line with those reported in Bertacchini et al (2018), who find that private museums in Italy offer more services than governmental museums; this coincidence is not surprising, since the databanks are similar (consider, however that Bertacchini et al resorted to the 2011 census data; thus, our up-dated investigation tells that four more years have not entailed significant changes in this respect). Looking at the other regressors, galleries and museums (MUS) provide more services than monuments and archeological areas or parks.…”

“…Since 1993, when the Ronchey Law came into force, private firms have applied for granting the supply of supporting, web and, sometimes, accessibility services in governmental museums. Bertacchini et al (2018) not surprisingly find that the availability of such complementary services is larger in governmental museums that resort to outsource for providing such services: governmental museums with financial autonomy and outsourced services outperform public museums directly or indirectly run by the different layers of government.…”

“…A similarly heterogeneous picture emerges for the three categories of services. The first group of regressors in our estimates concerns the ownership type and the organizational structure of museums (e.g., Bertacchini et al, 2018). Governmental museums (GOVERN) are museums owned and managed by the State or by other public (regional and local) public administrations, while private museums (PRIV) are owned by the private sector.…”

Efficiency Evaluation and Influencing Factor Analysis of China’s Public Cultural Services Based on a Super-Efficiency Slacks-Based Measure Model

“…Other scholars found through research that private cultural institutions are more efficient than public cultural institutions. Bertacchini et al [21] used the count data model to conduct an empirical study on the impact of ownership and organizational structures on the performance of cultural institutions. They found that the performance of private museums, public museums with financial autonomy, and outsourcing museums was better than that of public museums.…”

An economic valuation of access to cultural institutions: museums, theatres, and cinemas

“…Moreover, the institutionalisation of the policy by the city also means there exists insufficient space for including non-public actors. Recent studies show that people do not pay attention to whether the cultural offer is provided by the public or the private sector (Behr et al 2016), and publicly organising cultural institutions does not automatically result in the highest levels of effectiveness in the provision of accessibility, visitor's experience, and relation to the local context (Bertacchini et al 2018).…”