BEST MANAGEMENT PRACTICES OF CULTURAL INSTITUTIONS MANAGERS DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC: THE SHOW MUST GO ON!

Abstract

The paper presents the results of a qualitative survey based on interviews about several best management practices used by the cultural institutions managers to mitigate the negative effects on the arts world of the crisis generated by the COVDID 19 pandemic. This crisis has generated a continuously changing new reality characterized by several highly new obstacles. For the managers and employees of cultural institutions it presented strong challenges to insure their survival. Some of them were treating the crisis as an opportunity to identify and develop new, creative and highly innovative solutions to continuing to provide access to artistic events, mainly during the lockdown period of the pandemic. We have identified solutions like online concerts, transmitting shows and concerts on radio and TV, using shows from the archives, online museum tours. These provided joy in hard times to members of the public, hope and motivation, being a way to escape the dark and sad reality. Our results indicate that cultural institutions managers made bold and difficult decisions to continue to fulfill the mission of their organizations, to provide cultural, artistic services to their public. Together with their employees, they identified new ways to relate with the consumers of their artistic services when they were forbidden access in public places, including in concert halls, opera, theaters. One conclusion is that they were driven by the need to protect the health of the public and artists and by their strong desire to help the public to revive their feeling of human interaction through the power of the arts. Another important conclusion is that they had a rapid reaction approach to managing the totally unexpected crisis generated by the COVID 19 pandemic which proved to be effective in mitigating its highly negative impact.