Improving arts management/marketing efficiency: optimizing utilization of scarce resources to produce artistic outputs

PurposeThis longitudinal research examines US symphony orchestra sector organizations to determine individual efficiencies in allocating resources (donations, governmental/private funding, etc.) for desirable outputs (concerts, educational programs, community outreach). It provides researchers and managers with a tool for identifying, assessing and mitigating organizational inefficiencies.Design/methodology/approachThis study assesses relative efficiencies in performing arts organizations using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), a widely-used nonparametric data-intensive benchmarking technique that determines an optimal “production frontier” of best-practice organizations among their peers and assesses their abilities to turn multivariate inputs into multivariate desired outputs.FindingsThis analysis highlights efficiency differences in a wide range of orchestras in converting available resources into performance-related outputs. It provides individual arts organizations with useful results for developing practical benchmarks to achieve organizational efficiency improvement.Research limitations/implicationsThis study provides constructive benchmarking guidance for improving efficiencies of relatively-inefficient organizations. Future analysis can expand the scope to utilize a two-stage DEA model to provide more specific guidance to arts organizations.Practical implicationsThis pragmatic analysis enables arts/culture institutions to assess their organizational efficiencies and identify opportunities to optimize resources in producing social outputs for their target markets.Social implicationsEfficiency improvements enable performing arts organizations to provide additional artistic/social services, with fewer resources, to larger audiences.Originality/valueThis research demonstrates the abilities of DEA analysis to assess both a sector and its individual organizations to determine efficiencies, identify sources of inefficiencies and assess longitudinal efficiency trends.