Performance measurement and evaluation for cultural non-profit organisations : A model developed for Swedish museums

Sammanfattning: This study highlights the difficulty for non-profit cultural organisations to measure and evaluate the performance of their operations. The goal was to suggest and test a model for performance evaluation that can be used by museums, more specifically it was developed for Swedish Museums. The theoretical framing of the study is Operations Management. With this being a practical and problem-solving research discipline, the pragmatic approach with Design Science research was chosen as the methodological foundation. Based on this strategy several research methods were used in the process of solving the problem and designing the model. Based on previous models for performance evaluation, with the adaptation to the setting of Swedish Museums a model was presented, tested and evaluated in the study. The study was delimited to the design phase and implementation was not part of the report. After having tested the model, a follow-up interview was conducted. In the interview, the test results were presented to a museum manager in order to validate that the model can be used as a tool for decision support and as a way to report non-financial results to stakeholders such as politicians or their representatives.