Strategic decisions in the shadow of support

Faced with systemic and emerging challenges, museums often walk a fine line between financial sustainability and mission fulfillment while navigating resource dependency, particularly on government funding. The thesis investigates how museums in the Netherlands pursue financial health and structure their financial strategies within broader organizational goals. Grounded in resource dependency theory, it employs mixed methods to provide a holistic understanding of the topic. A descriptive analysis of financial data (2021-2024) forms the basis for understanding museums' financial structure and the strategic components that contribute to their financial health. Semi-structured interviews, analyzed with thematic methods, reveal the principles and key factors that museum managers consider when formulating sustainable financial strategies and decisions. The findings show that while museums demonstrate the capacity to meet current and future spending needs, their ability to plan long-term investments and growth is limited by constraints on net surplus generation and reserve accumulation. The project contributes to cultural economics and nonprofit financial literature by clarifying the role and influence of government intervention and by providing a framework that explains the case studies' financial conditions and decision-making logics in both financial and non-financial terms. It also connects theory and practice, highlighting the importance of an overarching approach and the limits of modern portfolio theory's applicability. These insights may be valuable to both policymakers and museum managers seeking to align financial strategies with the unique characteristics of cultural institutions.