Introduction
Since 2014, the Italian State museum system has been modified by the introduction of the “autonomous museum” and of the “regional museum hub” entities (dpcm August 29th 2014, n.171 and dm December 23rd 2014, with subsequent amendments). The latter include all State museums that were not granted autonomy, grouped on a regional basis. Before this reform, State museums in Italy were included in the administrative structure of the local Soprintendenza, lacking both the legal requirements and the endowment of resources needed to focus on their specific activities. With the reform, autonomous museums are now accountable for their own management and for the fulfilment of their mission, and are provided with specific management bodies and internal organization structures to accomplish these tasks.
This institutional paradigm shift opens the way for in-depth investigation of how Italian State museums carry out their mission and interact with their surrounding environment. All this is reflected in the accountability processes that the museums enact, both internally and externally.

State of the art in the research field
The provisions introduced by the reform are linked with several notions that shaped the debate around museum management in the last decades, such as the evolution of the role of museums in society as spaces for cultural transmission and dialogue, education, social cohesion and sustainable development, with a range of activities beyond preservation (UNESCO, 2015). This goes hand in hand with the need to adopt suitable information tools, not only to support management decisions, but also to disclose the socio-cultural goals and the results achieved and to acquire legitimacy from stakeholders (Legget, 2018; Milone and Pizzi, 2019). On these premises, the scholarly debate around accountability in museums over the last decades centred on the issue of performance measurement models (Weil, 1994; Gilhespy, 1999; Chiaravalloti, 2014).
Today, expanding the scope of accountability activities beyond performance reporting, through a detailed knowledge of all stakeholders (Gstraunthaler and Piber, 2007) and their engagement (Thomson and Bebbington, 2005) is seen as the key for the pursuit of responsiveness in the accountability mechanisms of non-profit organisations (Weber, 1999; Ebrahim, 2005) and, in particular, of museums (Saxton and Guo, 2011; Dainelli et al., 2013).
On the practical side, however, several surveys of annual reporting practices in museums all over the world highlighted how such practices are lacking, varying greatly, and being generally limited to some form of financial disclosure (Christensen and Mohr, 2003; Wei et al., 2008; Botes et al., 2013).
The need for museum accountability is particularly strong in the Italian context, where the quality of disclosure is significantly lower than in the rest of Europe, UK, and US (Dainelli et al., 2013; Manetti and Sibilio, 2014; Bambagiotti-Alberti et al., 2016; Paternostro and Ruisi, 2017). Analyses of the activities of State museums after the reform have been limited, almost always based on data on visitors and tickets (Leva et al., 2019; Alfano et al., 2022), or on theoretical reflections of Italian museum management scholars and professionals (Jalla, 2015; Casini, 2016, 2018; Baia Curioni, 2018; Zan et al., 2018).

Research questions and methodology
Within this framework, this exploratory research proposes to investigate the existing accountability practices in the first 20 museums that gained autonomy: Galleria Borghese, Gallerie degli Uffizi, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea (Rome), Gallerie dell’Accademia di Venezia, Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte, Pinacoteca di Brera, Reggia di Caserta, Galleria dell’Accademia di Firenze, Gallerie Estensi, Gallerie nazionali d’arte antica, Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria, Musei del Bargello, Museo archeologico nazionale di Napoli, Museo archeologico nazionale di Reggio Calabria, Museo archeologico nazionale di Taranto, Parco archeologico di Paestum e Velia, Palazzo Ducale di Mantova, Palazzo Reale di Genova, Musei Reali di Torino.
The research questions are the following: (i) How do autonomous museums carry out accountability practices? (ii) Which activities and processes are put in place by museums for accountability, and why? (iii) Which documents are produced and disclosed? (iv) Which kind of information is assessed and disclosed? (v) Who are the people involved?
The research follows the qualitative approach (Eisenhardt, 1989). The assessment of existing accountability processes inside State museums is investigated through case studies (Yin, 2017) conducted to investigate the characteristics of accountability practices and stakeholder relationships in a sample of the State museums analysed. Data collection techniques include: (i) interviews with key people inside and outside the museums; (ii) primary and secondary document analysis, such as museums’ websites, financial and non-financial reports for internal or external use, and museum-specific media coverage, both academic and generic.

Conclusions and managerial implications
Investigating the existing accountability and disclosure practices inside Italian State museums provides better insights in this scarcely developed field of research, by analysing institutions that have never been the object of such studies.
The results of the analysis can help Italian State museums obtain a clearer perspective on the pursuit of their mission, long-term strategy, and value creation, by pushing them towards self-reflection on stakeholder needs and improvement of accountability practices and internal skills. Lastly, the research can stimulate further reflections at the policymaking level on the development of specific accountability systems and for the assessment and disclosure of activities in State museums.
 
References
ALFANO, M. R., BARALDI, A. L., & CANTABENE, C. (2022). Eppur si muove: an evaluation of museum policy reform in Italy. Journal of Cultural Economics, 1-35.
BAIA CURIONI, S. (2018). ‘I've seen fire and I've seen rain’. Notes on the state museum reform in Italy. Museum Management and Curatorship, 33(6), 555-569.
BAMBAGIOTTI-ALBERTI, L., MANETTI, G., & SIBILIO-PARRI, B. (2016). The quality of annual reporting by Italian museums: An international comparison. International Journal of Public Administration, 39(14), 1159-1170.
BOTES, V., DIVER, R., & DAVEY, H. (2013). Preserving the past: An accountability study of the annual reporting practices by leading museums in USA, UK and Europe. Corporate Ownership & Control, 11(1), 893-906.
CASINI, L. (2014). Il" nuovo" statuto giuridico dei musei italiani. Aedon, (3).
CASINI, L. (2018). The long and winding road to the establishment of state-museums in Italy. Museum Management and Curatorship, 33(6), 546-554.
CHIARAVALLOTI, F. (2014). Performance evaluation in the arts and cultural sector: A story of accounting at its margins. The Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society, 44(2), 61-89.
CHRISTENSEN, A. L., & MOHR, R. M. (2003). Not‐for‐profit annual reports: what do museum managers communicate?. Financial accountability & management, 19(2), 139-158.
DAINELLI, F., MANETTI, G., & SIBILIO, B. (2013). Web-based accountability practices in non-profit organizations: The case of national museums. VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 24(3), 649-665.
EBRAHIM, A. (2005). Accountability myopia: Losing sight of organizational learning. Nonprofit and voluntary sector quarterly, 34(1), 56-87.
EISENHARDT, K. M. (1989). Building theories from case study research. Academy of management review, 14(4), 532-550.
GILHESPY, I. (1999). Measuring the performance of cultural organizations: A model. International journal of arts management, 38-52.
GSTRAUNTHALER, T., & PIBER, M. (2007). Performance measurement and accounting: Museums in Austria. Museum Management and Curatorship, 22(4), 361-375.
JALLA, D. (2015). La riforma dei musei statali italiani. Il giornale delle Fondazioni, 15.
LEGGET, J. (2018). Shared heritage, shared authority, shared accountability? Co-generating museum performance criteria as a means of embedding ‘shared authority’. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 24(7), 723-742.
LEVA, L., MENICUCCI, V., ROMA, G., RUGGERI, D. (2019). Innovazioni nella governance dei musei statali e gestione del patrimonio culturale: alcune evidenze da un’indagine della Banca d’Italia. Questioni di Economia e Finanza, 525.
MANETTI, G., & SIBILIO, B. (2014). L'orientamento alla rendicontazione sociale nei musei italiani. In I valori del museo. Strumenti e prospettive manageriali (pp. 221-251). Franco Angeli, Milano.
MILONE, V., & PIZZI, S. (2019). Managing the Complexity through New Forms of Financial Reporting: A Multiple Case Study on Italian Public Museums. Administrative Sciences, 9(4), 95.
PATERNOSTRO, S., & RUISI, M. (2017). The role of social report for performance measurement of museums: an Italian survey from the web. International Journal of Digital Culture and Electronic Tourism, 2(2), 120-138.
SAXTON, G. D., & GUO, C. (2011). Accountability online: Understanding the web-based accountability practices of nonprofit organizations. Nonprofit and voluntary sector quarterly, 40(2), 270-295.
THOMSON, I., & BEBBINGTON, J. (2005). Social and environmental reporting in the UK: a pedagogic evaluation. Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 16(5), 507-533.
UNESCO (2015). Recommendation concerning the protection and promotion of museums and collections, their diversity and their role in society. Unesco.
WEBER, E. P. (1999). The question of accountability in historical perspective: From Jackson to contemporary grassroots ecosystem management. Administration & Society, 31(4), 451-494.
WEI, T. L., DAVEY, H., & COY, D. (2008). A disclosure index to measure the quality of annual reporting by museums in New Zealand and the UK. Journal of Applied Accounting Research, 9(1), 29-51.
WEIL, S. E. (1994). Performance indicators for museums: progress report from Wintergreen. The journal of arts management, law, and society, 23(4), 341-351.
YIN, R. K. (2017). Case study research and applications: Design and methods. Sage publications.
ZAN, L., BONINI BARALDI, S. B., & SANTAGATI, M. E. (2018). Missing HRM: the original sin of museum reforms in Italy. Museum management and curatorship, 33(6), 530-545.

Accountability is a key concept regulating social interactions. It presumes a principal-agent relationship of delegation and is a mechanism "to put matters right" (Harlow and Rawlings 2007; p. 546). Accountability relations differ depending on the forums in which individual actors are evaluated (Bovens 2007) and are affected not only by how an organization sees itself but
also by how others see it. The social requirement of accountability is thus the same for individuals and organizations, and "only the rules of the accounting seem to be different" (Czarniawska, 1997, p. 45). Within the non-profit literature of the last twenty years, accountability was defined in many ways, making it difficult to navigate and take stock of knowledge from these researches (see for an excellent review and categorization Pilon and Brouard, 2022). Indeed, three major common themes emerged concerning to whom (whom are the parts involved in the principal-agent relationship?), for what (what are the assumed and felt responsibilities?), and how (what are the instruments used to explain and justify their actions?) an organization is held accountable (e.g., Pilon and Brouard, 2022)

The relationship between accountability and governance can be seen through the lens of accountability as an essential element of the governance process (e.g., Tacon, Walters, and Cornforth, 2017) but also more critically as the results of “tacit—assumptions about the nature of work organizations act to shape governance practices and constructs of accountability within nonprofits” (see Coule, 2015; p.76). Both approaches can be reconciled within a definition of governance as the ‘the systems by which organizations are directed, controlled and accountable’ (Cornforth 2003, p. 17). Thus, governance is the organizational solution to address accountability, as it defines the structures by which the principal-agent relationship is operationalized and addressed and the mechanisms put in place to operationalize and control it. Different theories explain the complex and, at times, ambiguous interactions among shareholders, board, and management, and why, for whom, and how organizations are held accountable (e.g., Coule, 2015; Pilon and Brouard, 2022). Most of the time, information asymmetries, power unbalances, and principal-agent relationships are taken into consideration in addressing accountability, while governance effectiveness focuses on board characteristics and inter-board and board/stakeholders’ relations (e.g., Cornforth, 2012; Coule, 2015; Tacon et al., 2017).

NPOs are an exciting case for analyzing the relationship between accountability and governance, as a public mission and a private governance structure simultaneously characterize them. The nature of the organizations makes them accountable for fulfilling their mission and how they spend the resources provided (e.g., Moxham, 2009). Additionally, the whom, what, and how can be heavily influenced by specific regulatory elements and the basic assumptions behind the different collective institutional forms that NPOs can assume.
Moreover, while NPOs may differ quite significantly in their mission, even within the same larger institutional framework, similar activities may be performed to meet very different goals.

In this work, we argue that the growing pressure on NPOs to qualify and quantify the impact generated by their activity (e.g., Moxham, 2014; Gazzola et al., 2021) does not adequately take into consideration how regulation and different institutional frameworks affect governance structures and the underlying obligations of accountability, which in turn affect how organizations prioritize why, on what and for whom they are held accountable. This is particularly true for cultural organizations, the focus of our analysis, which are a subset of NPOs often considered similar to social ventures. Quite to the contrary, their specific mission is cultural in nature but is increasingly embracing social issues. Given this landscape, we have complemented our analysis by including social organizations to appreciate differences in mission between cultural and social organizations while potential similarities in activities performed and in SDGs goals pursued. Finally, donors have been added to the selection as they focus on territorial development and are typical stakeholders of both categories of NPOs.

In this exploratory study, we are thus interested in analyzing the interplay of accountability and governance of cultural organizations in light of the similarities and differences that regulations and larger institutional frameworks put on the way such NPOs provide information about to whom, for what, by looking at sustainability reports as a common mean (how) to disclose such information. The guiding research questions are the following:
• To what extent do cultural organizations make explicit to whom and for what they see themselves accountable?
• Are there significant differences in how cultural organizations report accountability compared to other types of NPOs?
• As activities performed by different types of NPOs may be similar in their nature but different in purpose, is there any difference in how accountability is addressed by the type of mission pursued by different types of NPOs?


Methodology

In line with previous studies, we focused on sustainability reports to address how cultural organizations operationalize accountability and to appreciate specificities and similarities with other types of NPOs.

The landscape of Italian cultural organizations is very articulated, and no single source is available to describe them all. To build a comprehensive sample, we first listed categories of homogeneous organizations (members of most important associations, lists of eligible organizations for specific lines of public financing). We checked how many associates publish some non-financial reports. We then conducted extensive internet searches on several keywords and used a snowball procedure to complement the initial sample with smaller and local organizations. Our final sample consists of 320 sustainability, social or impact reports by 92 organizations in Italy from 2018-2022. To the best of our knowledge, this is the most extensive database available on this topic. Our sample includes three groups of organizations further characterized by their different governance structure (table 1).

Insert here Table 1

Results

Contrary to the evidence in the established managerial literature (Pizzi et al., 2020), our analysis shows the relevance attributed to non-financial disclosure by very small organizations compared to the set of most established, well-known, and more prominent cultural institutions. We interpret the decision to publish a non-financial report to build legitimacy and to gain visibility vis-a-vis other stakeholders (Clark et al., 2004), notwithstanding the administrative burden associated with this procedure.

The analysis shows that the number of cultural organizations publishing non-financial reports is still very limited. For what concerns organizations’ mission, cultural organizations emphasize cultural preservation and valorization, support to artists, and the right to culture as instruments to create citizenship. Social organizations focus on reducing inequalities and advocating for societal causes, while both have education and inclusion as common grounds for activity. Donors address cultural and social issues with specific attention to local socioeconomic development. Reference to SDGs highlights the complementarity and specificity of the two groups of organizations.

To summarize, there is a need to further dig into the institutional, organizational, and individual contextual variables able to impact the choice of what to report, how, to whom, and to what extent (Molecke Pinksem, 2017; Partal Dunphy, 2016; see also Turzo et al., 2022).

References

Bovens, M. (2007). Analysing and Assessing Accountability. A Conceptual Framework European Law Journal 13:4 447-468.

Clark, C., Rosenzweig, W., Long, D., & Olsen, S. (2004). Double bottom line project report: Assessing social impact in double bottom line ventures, New York: Rockefeller Foundation.

Cornforth, C. (2003). Contextualising non-profit governance: the influence of contextual factors on board characteristics and paradoxes.

Cornforth, C. (2012). Nonprofit governance research: Limitations of the focus on boards and suggestions for new directions. Nonprofit and voluntary sector quarterly, 41(6), 1116-1135.

Coule, T. M. (2015). Nonprofit governance and accountability: Broadening the theoretical perspective. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 44(1), 75-97.

Czarniawska, B. (1997). Narrating the organization: Dramas of institutional identity. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Harlow C., & Rawlings R. (2007) Promoting Accountability in Multi-level Governance: a Network Approach European Law Journal 13:4 542-562

Molecke, G., & Pinkse, J. (2017). Accountability for social impact: A bricolage perspective on impact measurement in social enterprises. Journal of Business Venturing, 32(5), 550-568.

Moxham, C. (2009). Performance measurement: Examining the applicability of the existing body of knowledge to non-profit organisations. International Journal of Operations & Production Management.

Moxham, C. (2014). Understanding third sector performance measurement system design: a literature review. International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management, 63(6), 704-726.

Partal, A., & Dunphy, K. (2016). Cultural impact assessment: a systematic literature review of current methods and practice around the world. Impact Assessment and Project Appraisal, 34(1), 1-13.

Pilon, M., & Brouard, F. (2022). Accountability Theory in Nonprofit Research: Using Governance Theories to Categorize Dichotomies. Voluntas https://doi.org/10.1007/s11266-022-00482-7

Pizzi, S., Caputo, A., Corvino, A., & Venturelli, A. (2020). Management research and the UN sustainable development goals (SDGs): A bibliometric investigation and systematic review. Journal of cleaner production, 276, 124033.

Tacon, R., Walters, G., & Cornforth, C. (2017). Accountability in nonprofit governance: A process-based study. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 46(4), 685-704.

Turzo, T, Marzi G., Favino C, and & Terzani S. (2022). "Non-financial reporting research and practice: Lessons from the last decade." Journal of Cleaner Production: 131-154.