Cultural Valorisation: A comprehensive and pondered perspective for the evaluation of small museums

This study introduces the Cultural Valorisation, an evaluation method developed for small museums, considering the balance between their cultural and business aspects. Small museums are underrated organisations; although similar to large museums, they have distinctive characteristics: low budget, polyvalent staff and indispensable volunteers.
Purposes are the fundamental reasons for their existences. Museums must be faithful to their purposes – deviating from them may be harmful. This study introduces ‘purpose- drift’, as consequence of either excess or deficiency of managerial practices, bureaucracy, or marketing.