Board Composition and Organizational Performance in the Cultural Sector: The Case of Italian Opera Houses

This article addresses the issue of sustainability of Italian opera houses by focusing on the relationship between board composition and organizational performance. Integrating agency and resource dependence theory, the authors develop a taxonomy of board profiles for opera houses and test the impact of both individual profiles and board diversity on the performance of Italian Lyric Symphonic Foundations (LSFs).They posit that different profiles will affect theatres' revenue structure differently, as each profile drives specific types of revenue, such as earned income, private funds and public funds. In order to empirically test their hypotheses, they perform a panel data analysis with fixed-effects and bootstrap resampling (N= 5,000) and robust clustered errors around theatres over an 11-year period (2001-12). While the literature stresses the crucial role of all board members in orienting an organization's performance, these new findings show the importance of different board profiles in affecting LSF revenue structure. The authors conclude that the board of directors can and should be mobilized to ensure the organization's growth.