The implementation of businesslike reporting in subsidized nonprofit arts organizations: an empirical evaluation

Nonprofit arts organizations in continental Europe are generally to a large extent dependent on governments for their funding. Based on the new institutional theory, coercive pressures exerted by these funding governments are expected to drive the implementation of institutional models and, as such, enhance institutional isomorphism. However, in case of competing logics, institutionalized models are said to be implemented only to a moderate extent and to drive practice variation. This paper attempts to test these contrary assertions on the implementation of institutionalized models by analyzing the implementation of businesslike reporting in Flemish subsidized nonprofit arts organizations. The construction of a compliance index, based on a random sample of 100 organizations, allows for a quantitative picture of this implementation and enables descriptive statistics and univariate tests to validate the hypotheses. Elaborating on the results, partially confirming the stated hypotheses, the discussion formulates some topics for future research.