The Pursuit of Responsive Museum Governance: Community Engagement in Turkish Public Museums

The public museum sector does not remain untouched by the main trends and changes in public administration, even if it has some different characteristics from other government agencies in terms of administrative priorities and purpose. This is why the sector has been largely influenced by the prevailing administrative model of the era. Today, community engagement has become one of the main topics in the sector in parallel with the changes in public administration. Thus, the objective of this study is to propose and test a model that explains Turkish public museums’ community engagement performance. Findings of the research show that goal clarity is the most important factor in the community engagement performance of Turkish public museums, whereas museum infrastructure is surprisingly the least significant factor. Furthermore, this study reveals the positive correlation between the fulfilment of endogenous and exogenous functions of the public museums. Therefore, any effort to make them more engaged in their community should not be regarded as an alternative of their primary functions, namely endogenous functions.