Quality, service level, or empire: which is the objective of the nonprofit arts firm?

Arthur Brooks and Jan Ondrich

Journal of Cultural Economics, 2007, vol. 31, issue 2, 129-142

Abstract: In this article, we examine the objectives of nonprofit arts firms. We approach this problem from both theoretical and empirical angles, building a structural model of arts nonprofit utility that distinguishes between the maximization of quality, the organization’s level of service, and its budget. We then construct an empirical method for testing which objective is evident in firm-level data. As an example application, we test the objectives of the managers of American public radio stations in the 1990s, finding that about half of stations have discernible objectives. The data show service is not an objective for about 30% of the stations; quality can be ruled out for 49%; and budget is rejected for 69%. In addition, large stations are harder to classify by objective than small ones are. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2007

Keywords: Public radio; Charitable giving; Managerial objectives; Z11; L31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10824-007-9032-0 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:jculte:v:31:y:2007:i:2:p:129-142

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... cs/journal/10824/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10824-007-9032-0

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Cultural Economics is currently edited by Federico Etro and Douglas Noonan

More articles in Journal of Cultural Economics from Springer, The Association for Cultural Economics International Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().