Museum Management and Marketing

Richard Sandell, Robert R. Janes, Richard Sandell, Robert R. Janes

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2007
• ISBN:
  9781134155996
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Negocios y empresa
• Subtopic: Administración de museos

Drawing together a selection of high quality, intellectually robust and stimulating articles on both theoretical and practice-based developments in the field, this Reader investigates the closely linked areas of management and marketing in the museum.

The articles, from established and world-renowned contributors, practitioners and writers at the leading edge of their fields, deal with the museum context of management and how marketing and management practices must take account of the specifics of the museum and the not-for-profit ethos.

Key writings from broader literature are included, and the collection of key writings on the investigation and study of management and marketing in the museum are of great benefit not only to those studying the subject, but also to professionals working and developing within the field.

Complexity and Creativity in Contemporary Museum Management

Robert R. Janes

Richard Sandell

DOI: 10.4324/9780203964194-1

The complex world of museums

Museum Workers Often Joke about the public perception of them and their work, noting the widespread belief that museums must be an ideal place to work – peaceful refuges, often elegant, usually clean and definitely not buffeted by the rude demands of a ‘real-life’ workplace. The non-museum world is continually surprised, however, to learn of the complexities and demands of museum work. Much of this complexity stems from the very nature of the museum enterprise itself, and any discussion of the role of museum management and marketing must begin with an overview of some of these complexities. In short, the range of issues and pressures confronting museums in the twenty-first century is equal to that of any sector of organized life.

Consider that cultural administrators must operate complex organizations with inadequate resources and, unlike administrators in the private sector, are rarely able to accumulate budget deficits to undertake the research and development necessary to improve organizational effectiveness. At the same time, underpaid staff (often unionized) and volunteers must be motivated to perform to high professional standards. Both executives and staff alike must answer to governing bodies consisting of individuals or organizations whose experience and expertise most often lie outside of the visual and heritage arts. This is in contrast to corporate boards, which seldom include anyone other than business people. At the same time, museums and galleries must also provide meaning and enjoyment to a diverse range of publics within the context of changing societal values. Museums, in their role as custodial institutions of the world's material heritage, must also acknowledge and serve two unique communities – our ancestors and those who are not yet born. Neither of these museum constituencies vote nor consume, and thus have no visibility or involvement in the two dominant forces of contemporary society – commerce and politics. Yet, these silent communities must be served. To add further complexity, most museums must somehow assume all these responsibilities in an era of declining or marginal public funding, while at the same time fostering individual and organizational change to ensure survival and sustainability. Simply making a profit might be seen to be a welcome relief from the potpourri of competing values and interests common to most museums. Museums, however, exist in a world of often baffling complexity and do not have the luxury of a simple profit and loss statement.

Managing these complexities within a rapidly changing world has necessitated substantial changes in mainstream museums, and many of these changes are chronicled in the articles that follow. Embracing both management and marketing responsibilities, however, can still result in polarized thinking among museum professionals, and there is often a tendency to see the adoption of business practices as a cure-all for the non-profit world or, conversely, a scourge to be ignored as fully as possible, although the latter view is far less common than it was a decade ago. It is understandable why polarized thinking emerges in the face of seemingly intractable management complexities, and it is instructive to have a closer look at a sample of these issues and their paradoxical relationships with this in mind. Nonetheless, it will be essential for museums to work through the tension between the dictates of the marketplace and traditional museum values, recognizing that this tension can stimulate creativity and new ways of thinking.

The following collection of management and marketing issues is universally applicable to museums, irrespective of size and history, although larger museums perforce have a greater share. Most, if not all, of these issues are related to an increasing interest in the visitor experience, especially over the past decade. We hesitate to call this a shift from a focus on collections to a focus on visitors, as collections remain a preoccupation for most, if not all, museums. The growing concern with the visitor experience is more accurately seen as an add-on to existing museum responsibilities. This gradual change in perspective has been accompanied by a decline in public funding for museums, notably in North America and Western Europe, coupled with the increasing use of business solutions to address the challenges that beset museums. For example, there has been a decline in museum attendance and the visitor base (Burton and Scott 2003; Martin 2002) that has prompted many museums to increase revenues through high-profile, blockbuster exhibitions and architectural sensationalism. The underlying theme in these initiatives is the conventional wisdom, ‘build it and they will come’. Although the long-term success of this approach to business planning remains to be seen, it is generally recognized that these activities are so consumptive of staff time and resources that little of either are left over for other activities. At the same time, despite individual successes in audience development, there has been little change in the traditional visitor profile – those with post-secondary education and relatively high incomes are still the majority of museum goers (Cheney 2002).

These trends, in turn, have resulted in a preoccupation with revenues and attendance as the predominant measures of worth. Not surprisingly, many of the governing authorities responsible for these museums are also beginning to resemble corporate entities, with board members being chosen for their business experience and their fundraising skills. This tendency for business people to select other business people as governing colleagues is a sort of tribalism, and is characteristic of business in general. This tribalism is also embodied in the near absence of any nonprofit executives on corporate boards of directors, and this limited perspective has noteworthy implications for both museum governance and operations.

The increasing presence of the business model is also visible in contemporary searches for museum directors, or CEOs, as they are now called in deference to the corporate model. While an advanced degree in a related area or a professional designation may be required, the emphasis in these senior appointments is now clearly on fundraising, financial management, marketing and public relations. Museum critics observe that the pendulum has swung too far, and museums are at risk of eroding their core missions under the leadership of well-intentioned business people whose knowledge and experience are limited to the dictates of the marketplace. This may also partly explain the increasing ennui among various museum executives, weary of the perpetual round of cocktail parties and events required to keep many museums solvent these days. This is not meant to demean the importance of these activities, but rather to highlight the importance of maintaining an intelligent balance between the core mission and economic realities. There is relevant experience to be gleaned from the performing arts in this instance, as dance and theatre companies often have two positions – one for the managing director (read ‘business manager’) and one for the creative director (read ‘scholar’ or ‘scientist’). A clear protocol is essential in this instance to ensure both adherence to a common vision and effective communication. Museums would be wise to pay attention to the lessons of other sectors, if they are to manage these emerging complexities creatively.

Fortunately, the need for management and leadership training is clearly recognized by the museum sector, and there are a variety of well-established approaches for equipping museum professionals with the knowledge, skills and experience to become leaders and managers. These include the Getty Leadership Institute (USA) and the Clore Leadership Programme (UK), as well as the inclusion of management and marketing training in museum studies programmes around the world. It is important to note that leadership and management potential is not the exclusive domain of those with scholarly, scientific and curatorial credentials. Other museum professionals, whether educators or marketers, also understand the museum context and can make effective leaders and managers. It is clear that contemporary management and marketing issues are broad and deep, difficult to avoid and inextricably interconnected. It is this last characteristic, namely interconnectedness, that may have caught the museum community off guard in its rush to embrace business solutions. It is not necessarily obvious that declining public revenues might ultimately create boards of directors lacking in cultural diversity and community connectedness, and museums are not alone in their confusion. This newfound complexity is reminiscent of the revelations that have emerged in the progression from Newtonian physics to quantum theory. Where scientists once saw the world as a great clock, with independent parts and well-defined edges, they now see a level of connectedness among seemingly discrete parts that are widely separated in time and space (Wheatley 1994: 39). A worldview marked by boundaries and reductionism no longer serves physics or museum management.

Museums are also of this world, and cannot expect to ignore or retreat from this mounting complexity. The challenge is to identify the knowledge and techniques that will best serve the well-being of museums in a manner which befits their particular role, while respecting the attendant ambiguity. It is important to note in this regard that museums are privileged work environments because they, like all non-profits, are organizations whose purpose is their meaning (Handy 1994: 183). This privilege is accompanied by the responsibility to take advantage of one of the most free and creative work environments on the planet through the application of thoughtful management and marketing. For example, an important challenge for museum marketers is to build civic brands around ideas that are less tangible than customer service and efficiency (Demos 2005: 4). Such ideas could include community, shared ownership and collective identity, and could be based on the use of marketing techniques to build brands that produce emotional identification and take credit for the public value that museums create. This is a creative alternative to using the language of the private sector, with its emphasis on individual consumption.

Managing complexity

Surprisingly, and despite the growing body of management and marketing knowledge, a cloud seems to have settled and remained over leadership and management (Greenleaf 1996: 111). A partial answer lies in the observation that management is much more than a bundle of techniques, although many business schools still teach management with this approach. In the words of the late Peter Drucker (1995: 250), ‘The essence of management is to make knowledge productive. Management, in other words, is a social function. And in its practice, management is a truly liberal art.’ The notion of management as a liberal art is an instructive one, and obligates us to now consider several ideas that encompass this broader view of management, including the need for intelligent change that the twenty-first century demands. The reader will note that some of these ideas are also explored later in this volume, but their potential value in expanding the capacity of museum management justifies some judicious repetition in this introduction.

Self-organization

There is a burgeoning literature, and an enormous management consulting business, devoted to improving organizational efficiency and effectiveness in all sectors of society. A cursory search of the Internet using ‘business consulting’ revealed 82 pages of text. Whether it is books sold in airport bookshops, or the ever-increasing number of business schools with MBA programmes, the task of helping both profit and non-profit organizations to manage better is a growth industry of extraordinary proportions. The demand is there, at least in the private sector, if a recent survey of UK business consulting fees is any indication. The average salary for a partner or director in a business consulting firm is 109,000 pounds sterling, accompanied by an average bonus of 76,000 pounds sterling, or a total of 375,550 in Canadian dollars (Woodhurst 2005). Yet, despite all the efforts of organizations and their management consultants to understand employees and to manage them more effectively, many employees remain stressed, poorly managed and generally dissatisfied. According to the World Health Organization (Galt 2000: B15; Leka, Griffiths and Cox 2003), stress, anxiety and depression will become the leading causes of disability in the workplace over the next 20 years.

One way of promoting the growth, development and self-respect of museum workers is to abandon or minimize hierarchical structures – the preferred organizational model for the vast majority of museums. Various museums are learning, however, that creativity can be stimulated by organizing differently (Farson 1996: 102–105), while many small museums have known this all along. A promising development in this regard is the idea of self-organization, a group phenomenon that occurs spontaneously when members of a group produce coherent behaviour in the absence of formal hierarchy within the group, or authority imposed from outside it (Stacey 1992: 6). Decisions are made at the most local level in the organization where they can be made well, and this requires that managers respect and nurture the so-called informal leaders – those individuals who exercise influence and authority by virtue of their competence and commitment, and not because of any formal position in the hierarchy. Informal leaders exist at all levels in all museums and are essential ingredients in effective self-organization by fostering interaction and interdependence. The key point is for management to focus on results, rather than insist upon any particular process or means for achieving the results. David Bohm (quoted in Jaworski 1998: 109), the physicist, writes that human beings have an innate capacity for collective intelligence, based on dialogue. Dialogue does not require that people agree with one another, but rather allows people to participate in a pool of shared meaning that can lead to aligned action. Simply put, hierarchical structures get in the way as staff attempt to navigate across and between organizational boundaries, be they departments, divisions or the manager's office. Responsible autonomy (Fairtlough 2005) is another alternative to hierarchy, and means a group deciding what to do, and being accountable for the outcome. Accountability is what makes responsible autonomy different from hierarchy. Zen Master, Suzuki Roshi, succinctly summarized this new thinking when he said, ‘to control your cow, give it a bigger pasture’ (quoted in Locke 2000: 28). An instructive example of self-organization is the Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver, Canada (Krug, Fenger and Ames 1999: 254). The boundaries of their position descriptions are flexible, and the museum's informal organizational struc...