Within this topic the projects involve museums, theatres and coproduction houses for dance and theatre. The theoretical and empirical foci revolve around legitimacy, manageralism, Human Resource Management and marketing of arts and cultural organizations.

Legitimacy

Legitimacy is bounded to a certain milieu in which the public sector constitutes one of the most important stakeholder groups besides the groups of visitors/customers, artists and sponsors. Strengthening organizational acting towards the numerous and different stakeholder groups impacts the development of strategies, policies, and objectives in cultural organizations. The emphasis within this research focus is on legitimacy strategies and evaluation.

Manageralism

These days, strategic orientation, mission development and positioning constitute permanent elements within organizational decision-making in the Nonprofit Sector. The predominant concentration on the achievement of financial objectives, such as the increase of the contribution to the revenues or the development of communication concepts alongside commercial principals to market an organization's services to its stakeholder groups are already important cornerstones in nonprofit management. In particular, the following subjects describe the content-related orientation of the research area:

• Human resource management and reputation in arts organizations

This topic focuses on the distribution of power within the organization, the strategic orientation of arts organizations, the decision making processes for castings and the formation of teams under the consideration of an organization´s reputation. A further emphasis is made on the entrepreneurial employee.

• Marketization in museums

Management of museums is confronted with environmental changes, such as altered visitor behavior, thus increased demands on product ranges, bills and services; increasing competition on the leisure market, but also tight budgets and hence the reinforced demand of consequent market orientation. These aspects lead to an increased consideration of theory-based marketing management efforts as well as intensified strategy development in museums. The implementation of appropriate marketing tools completes a comprehensive market-oriented approach. Public funded museums shops are in the center of consideration.