Turnover among museum directors and some implications for innovation

Abstract

Of the twenty-five museum directors included in the innovation survey, six served less than three years. The average number of innovations implemented by this group was 1.1 innovations per year. Nineteen of the museum directors served from three years to a maximum of ten at the other museums surveyed. They implemented an average of 1.8 innovations. The difference is clearly not significant. Even if the difference had been greater, it could be argued that the relatively small sample size influenced the outcome. By the same token, the results do not disconfirm the proposition being investigated and seem to support the concept of a point at which turnover of directors becomes dysfunctional in museums.

Next, an attempt was made to find a correlation between length of service and kinds of innovations implemented. The twenty-five respondents were divided into three groups of Short-, Medium- and Long-term Stayers. What emerged was information that offered support to the concept that Short-term Stayers tend to initiate innovation most often (in order of frequency) in the categories of Education/Interpretation, Administration and Exhibits/Security. Other innovations in the areas of Public Relations/Marketing, Trustee and Volunteer Recruitment, Training, and Relations and Facility Maintenance/ Management were well below the numbers of innovations set into place by Medium- or Long-term Stayers. This was true even when the expected fact emerged that the longer people stayed in their jobs, the higher the number of innovations implemented.

In fact, two propositions emerged from this information. The first states that: ‘Short-term museum directors are more likely to introduce innovation in the areas of Education/Interpretation, Administration, and Exhibits/Security than in Facility Maintenance/Management, Trustee and Volunteer Recruitment, Training, and Relations, or Collections Management.’

The second states that: ‘Long-term museum directors probably implement more innovation in the general areas of Fund-Raising/Revenue Generation, Public Relations/ Marketing, and Trustee and Volunteer Recruitment, Training and Relations than Short- or Medium-term Stayers.’

A closer examination of the twenty-five telephone interviews, coupled with an analysis of the innovation results, leads to the development of two additional propositions. One states that: ‘Museum directors at institutions operated by colleges and universities, or federal, state, or local governments probably implement far fewer innovations in the areas of Administration, Fund/Raising/Revenue Generation, or Facility Maintenance/ Management than other museums operated by not-for-profit corporations.’ The other states: ‘Rates of innovation among museum directors is probably curvilinear, with Short-term Stayers producing few innovations, Medium-term Stayers producing the biggest number, and Long-term Stayers experiencing a decline in innovation.’ (The rate is computed by dividing years of service into the number of innovations.)

Clearly there were several methodological limitations encountered in the innovation study. The measurement of innovation in and of itself is a difficult issue to address, particularly in a quantifiable sense. Even the research model suggested by Chakrabarti, which provided some methodological guidance for this study, was hardly without fault. First, the data concerning implementation of innovation by various museum directors were most difficult to retrieve. Even with a comprehensive list of innovation categories and examples mailed in advance, the key informants, in many instances, struggled to create a history of innovation for museum directors whom they had known and worked with for a number of years. The tedious process of locating viable informants and preparing them for the telephone interview, coupled with the expense, caused the sample size to be less than ideal. The problems of counting innovations and quantifying them in some meaningful way proved difficult, making the results less satisfying than originally anticipated.