Special Issue Editorial: Methodologies for Researching the Museum as Organization

Abstract

The editorial provides a framework for considering the museum as organization and its implications for methods.This special issue contains seven empirically driven contributions to provoke further examination of the museum as organization.

Museums and the Post-Digital: Revisiting Challenges in the Digital Transformation of Museums

“…The first step towards this fundamental change is to have a more granulated and nuanced understanding of digital transformation in the backstage of museums and how museum professionals respond to it. To conduct a multidimensional examination of the challenges, museums are considered in this paper as "peopled organizations" consisting of norms, behaviours, routines, activities, regulations, tensions, materials, aspirations, and values [19] (p. 116). Following Areti Damala et al [8] (p. 3), this paper uses the terms "digital technology" and "museum technology" as umbrella terms to cover the vast array of digital technologies used in museums today (VR/AR, online ticketing systems, content management systems, digital audio guides, 3D reconstructions, museum websites, digital exhibitions, etc.).…”

“…Similarly, Maria Shehade and Theopisti Stylianou Lambert [7] note that the perceptions and experiences of museum professionals with emerging technologies need to be explored in more depth to contribute to the current literature [16,17]. It is important, in other words, to look "behind the scenes" of museums [18] because they are working places for professionals to engage in "everyday organizational processes and administrative practices and inhabit the workplace with all its complexities and contradictions" [19] (p. 112). Drawing from this literature, this paper explores digital transformation in the current post-digital circumstance by looking at the "backstage" of museums with a specific focus on the challenges museum professionals need to address.…”

Understanding Audience Participation Through Positionality: Agency, Authority, and Urgency

“…Museums can be considered as living organizations made up of many practices and people, and the interactions between them, each "organizational life-world" different and dynamic. 4 This has been recognized in more recent explorations of participation practices and the impacts of variables such as the size of the institution 5 or the 2/15 departments and professional spheres that museum professionals work within. 6 Institutional context undoubtedly impacts the way staff understand and value participation, and who we are as museum professionals and as people matters; both influenced by, and influential on, the institutions we work in.…”

La Casa del Museo (Ciudad de México, 1972–1980): una etnografía multilocal sobre la acción cultural extramuros

“…Para que una institución, de la complejidad del Museo Nacional de Antropología funcione, todos los días cientos de trabajadores se levantan, se trasladan y acuden a ese lugar a ejecutar sus labores, desde los directivos, pasando por los administrativos hasta los vigilantes y personal de limpieza, tienen una tarea que cumplir. Los museos -y otras instituciones-son espacios "poblados" (Morse et al, 2018) que pueden estudiarse como organizaciones desde las teorías de la práctica (Wenger, 2001) mirando las actividades cotidianas "lo que hacen las personas", y de esta forma restaurar a los actores en los procesos sociales sin perder de vista las estructuras que restringen -pero también permiten-la acción social (Ortner, 1984).…”