Increasing the Managerial Performance of Romanian Museums with the Help of Stakeholders

Museum professionals worldwide make considerable efforts to maintain the integrity of the cultural institutions they manage, as organizations that collect, research, conserve, and exhibit, as well as in their educational and social purpose, in a concerted effort to make museums more performing, more popular, more attractive and more competitive. In this context, many questions arise about how a performing museum looks like in the current social, political, and cultural contexts, how the performance of a museum can be evaluated, and, especially, how the managerial performance of museums can be increased. At the center of these concerns, the issue of stakeholders, the partnerships with them, the strategies for their optimal approach, as well as the impact of such initiatives on increasing the managerial performance of museums, occupy an essential role. One of the objectives of this research is to emphasize the need to use new strategies, methods, and tools in an attempt to make museum institutions perform better from a managerial point of view. To verify the perception of such initiatives, two practical applications were carried out: quantitative research, which analyzes the perception of internal stakeholders (museum staff) on the involvement of external stakeholders in the process of improving museum services, and qualitative research, which sought to capture the perception of museum managers in Romania regarding partnerships with stakeholders and their role in increasing the managerial performance of the institution. The results show that museums are becoming increasingly aware of the importance of stakeholders with an active interest in museum practices and policies and optimized solutions regarding the institutional and organizational transformation of museum institutions in Romania are taking shape, to rebuild the way museums interact with relevant stakeholders.