Managing the Complexity through New Forms of Financial Reporting: A Multiple Case Study on Italian Public Museums

Virginia Milone,Simone Pizzi

doi:10.3390/admsci9040095

Abstract

During recent years, an increasing number of studies have started to discuss the introduction of new form of reports in public administration. Furthermore, the attention paid by academics has been favoured by the introduction of a new form of regulation by policy makers. Specifically, a large part of these studies has regarded the heritage sector due to its high degree of complexity. The attention paid to the heritage sector has been driven by the existence of asymmetries between the value of cultural assets and the profitability of institutions. According to this evidence, the aim of this paper is to evaluate the effectiveness of the Italian Integrated Economic Report (IER). Our research highlights that the adoption of managerial reports, such as the IER, could provide useful insights for policy makers in order to invest their financial resources in a more effective way.

Highlights

Investments in culture represent one of the main drivers for the development of a country due to the positive externalities related to citizen participation in these activities (Benhamou and Amici 2001; Palmi et al 2016).the management of cultural institutions by government is very often criticised (Venturelli 2012a)
The management of cultural institutions by government is very often criticised (Venturelli 2012a). This is related to the divergence between financial performance, heritage asset value, and the value perceived by the citizen
As in other sectors, the behaviour of public managers is negatively influenced by the high degree of bureaucratization and by the lack of market incentives related to financial performance (Meneguzzo 2007)

Summary

Introduction

The management of cultural institutions by government is very often criticised (Venturelli 2012a). This is related to the divergence between financial performance, heritage asset value, and the value perceived by the citizen. As in other sectors, the behaviour of public managers is negatively influenced by the high degree of bureaucratization and by the lack of market incentives related to financial performance (Meneguzzo 2007). Asymmetric information between PMs and visitors is a further limitation, caused by the difficulty of evaluating the value of the heritage assets. The differences between museum visitors in terms of behaviour and exigence represent another criticism of the effective organization of the entities (Vecco and Srakar 2018)

Objectives

Methods

Findings

Discussion

Conclusion