Corporate social responsibility (CSR): Curators’ specific responses from Australian museums and art galleries

ABSTRACT

Presented and analysed are interviews with a blend of museums and art galleries in Victoria, Australia, conducted within the wider context of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in the global scene of curated collections as tourist attractions. A subsequent website content analysis of public communication by the organizations augments the CSR insights of the interviews. The findings suggest the interviewed organizations follow a contextual form of CSR and its expression depends on the underlying knowledge of the role of CSR as a tourism issue. Successively, a range of socio-cultural drivers and inhibitors enter the mix for the curators of the collections and tend currently to converge in the social and economic dimensions. The definition of CSR and the debate about the theoretical and practical economic pressures of tourism management for museums and art galleries are uncovered, along with directions for future research indicated within this significant sub-field of the tourism sector.

GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT

KEYWORDS:

• Museum
• art gallery
• CSR
• social responsibility
• management
• socio-cultural

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The authors wish to acknowledge that funding, as part of the Institute of Public Administration grant, assisted in this project.