Micro examination of museum workplace culture: how institutional changes influence the culture of a real-world art museum

ABSTRACT: This paper explores how the art museum's leadership, management structure, and internal communications influence its workplace culture. Using ethnographic inquiry and grounded theory, the paper demonstrates how a specific museum's organizational culture is constructed and how it can be changed through various structural and value-driven changes based on an emerging theory of an organization as an open system. At the museum, an unstable organizational structure caused by frequent leadership turnover factored heavily in creating a non-collaborative workplace with ongoing personal conflicts. The institutional and internal changes called for a more flexible management system than the traditional hierarchical structure. However, by adopting qualities of a learning organization that constantly evolves and grows, this art museum can become a more effective and efficient organization with a stable management structure, sustainable and collective leadership, an effective communicational system, and therefore a positive, cohesive, and vision-driven workplace.