Abstract

Cultural institutions today have contradictory responsibilities: to be key platforms for art and knowledge production, involving audiences in critical reflection and art participation, but also to contribute to economic development and, due to austerity measures, to its own sustainability. Words like benchmarks, entrepreneurialism, sustainability, and efficiency are introducing new (capitalist) values in public cultural sphere. However, adaptable quality management might be a good response for a public cultural system and for the whole creative sector (civil society organizations and creative industries that embed social responsibility in their practices). The public cultural system has to become an autonomous sphere – rejecting pressures to foster values of competitivity, efficiency, and profitability, but accepting its duty to respond to new needs with adequate intrapreneurialism and social imagination.