Museums, Money, and Markets: the Adoption of Market Practices in US Art Museums 2007-2011

• In Event: 388 - Section on Organizations, Occupations and Work Paper Session. Organizational Culture and Institutional Logics

Abstract

This paper analyzes how and when non-profit organizations adopt market practices during a period of economic duress. It examines the diffusion of contentious practices that follow from a shift in institutional logics and mimetic isomorphism, with data from the population of American art museums (a sample of 501(c)(3) operating charities of NTEE (The National Taxonomy of Exempt Entities) code A51 “art museums”). We try to reconcile competing logics theory with the institutional theory of isomorphism, which are often addressed separately, by showing how a shift in institutional logic affects patterns of mimetic behavior. Marketization of the nonprofit world was accelerated by economic crisis not only because the crisis directly affected the financial structure of art museums but also by reshaping institutional logics of nonprofits and by the mimetic diffusion of market practices

Authors

• Kangsan Lee, Northwestern University

• Bruce G. Carruthers, Northwestern University