ACCOUNTABILITY AND GOVERNANCE IN CULTURAL ORGANIZATIONS

Accountability is a crucial concept regulating social interactions. In the last twenty years, accountability has been defined in many ways in non-profit literature, making it difficult to navigate and assess the knowledge from this body of research. In this exploratory study, we are thus interested in analyzing the interplay of accountability and governance of cultural organizations, considering the similarities and differences that regulations and larger institutional frameworks put on the way such NPOs provide information about to whom and for what an organization is held accountable by looking at sustainability reports as a common mean (how) to disclose such information. We decided to compare them with social organizations since they differ significantly in mission and scope, yet the activities they perform make their distinction blurred. Finally, we considered donors since they represent a stakeholder for both. Our sample consists of 320 non-financial reports by 92 organizations in Italy from 2018–2022. While it is the most extensive sample available on this topic, it shows how a very limited number of cultural organizations publish non-financial reports. In contrast with the managerial literature, our analysis shows the relevance of non-financial disclosure for very small organizations compared to the most established and bigger cultural institutions. Additionally, we show how differences within organizations with the same mission are potentially driven by institutional differences and that cultural organizations emphasize preservation and valorization and support artists as instruments to create citizenship, while social organizations focus on reducing inequalities and advocating for societal causes.