Lockdown, high energy prices or cyber attacks: cultural institutions are also faced with economic situations to which they have to react quickly. In industrial companies, controlling instruments are an integral part of corporate management for such cases. Prof. Dr. Nils Balke and his colleague Navid Azarafroz have been working together with cultural institutions for a year to analyze how they have been controlling economic development and how controlling instruments from companies can be specifically adapted for cultural institutions.
“It’s no use simply applying the existing procedures from industrial companies to the cultural sector,” says the professor for controlling. “That’s why we first took a close look at how the cultural institutions work and, for example, create plans and reports. In the second step, we worked together to develop a procedure for how the economic instruments from industry can be implemented in the cultural institution or how the instruments that already exist in the cultural institution can be further developed.”
The scientists are conducting the first pilot project with the European Hanseatic Museum in Luebeck through. The director of the museum, Dr. Felicia Sternfeld draws an initial positive balance:
We are very pleased to have been part of this project from the very beginning. In interviews and workshops, we worked out how we can manage our museum even more professionally.”
Always there: Navid Azarafroz, project collaborator of Prof. Balke. “There was particularly good feedback in terms of reporting. Together with the assistant to the management, Kristin Fechner, we have developed a report format that consists of meaningful graphics. This helps to clearly present the development in each month and to update it continuously with little effort.”
Balke and Sternfeld have already presented the first results of the collaboration to the administrative management working group of the German Museum Association at the 2022 autumn conference in the Städel Museum in Frankfurt. There they found many open ears. The TH researchers then started nationwide projects with the German Museum of Technology in Berlin, the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn, the Deutsches Museum in Munich, the Arp Museum Bahnhof Rolandseck in Remagen and the Lindenmuseum in Stuttgart.
In order to continue to exchange information on controlling topics across museums, an online controlling group was also established with the museums of the German Museum Association. In this quarterly, current controlling topics and interim results of the project are discussed.
In the projects with the individual museums, we work, for example, on optimizing the planning and reporting processes, the procedures for budget control or the development of a system for identifying and assessing risks. The knowledge gained in the projects is made available to other museums, for example via the online controlling group or in the form of guidelines. This means that controlling structures in museums can be developed more quickly and resources are saved,” summarizes Prof. Balke.
Further information on the “Controlling and Management of Cultural Institutions” project can be found at www.th-luebeck.de/cmvk