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This study investigates the reactions of public sector organisations to the accountability pressures of online dashboards and the impact of this reactivity on reporting systems. This study explores the concept of “reactivity,” which explains changes in organisational behaviours in reaction to being evaluated, observed or measured.

This study adopts a case study methodology to investigate organisations’ reactivity to an online dashboard within the Italian system of state museums. Data were gathered through a real-time dashboard initiated in 2019, complemented by interviews, participant observations and secondary sources collected over a period of three years.

The results indicate that online dashboards provoke a divergent but coexistent response: competitive reactivity when museums modify their behaviours to improve performance disclosed in the online dashboard, and polyphonic reactivity when museums question the algorithm’s validity and accuracy on the basis of the online dashboard. This finding reveals the emergence of layered accountability, with organisations balancing public expectations and hierarchical standards through manipulation and boycott, thereby giving rise to a decoupled system of measures.

This research contributes to the literature on public sector accountability by highlighting the dual nature of reactivity, both conforming to and resisting the imposed metrics. This study enhances our understanding of the interplay between digital accountability mechanisms and organisational responses, offering insights into the complexities of adapting to real-time, data-driven environments in the public sector.

This study explores the relationship between governance model – private organisations vs non-profit organisations (NPOs) – and performance in football clubs.

The study is a comparative case study of two football clubs with different governance models: Malmö FF, which is an NPO, and Bologna FC, which is a privately owned club.

The results show that both football clubs focus equally on financial and non-financial performance, and in practice, both clubs use a blend of private and NPO governance models. While supporting efforts towards financial results, blending the models appears to support football clubs' management of the tension between financial and non-financial performance and the expectation that they will contribute to local development. Thus, using a blend of the two models is not only accepted but expected.

This study is a comparative case study of two football clubs. This study furthers our understanding of how football clubs manage the tension between financial and non-financial performance expectations. This is particularly of interest in light of the increasing professionalisation of sports, especially football, and how this might jeopardise the contributions that sport clubs make to the local community.

By exploring the relationship between governance model and performance, this study shows that, contrary to expectations, privately owned football clubs focus as much on non-financial performance as clubs governed as NPOs. This study contributes to the existing literature by showing how clubs use a mixture of elements from governance models to manage the tension between financial and non-financial performance that has emerged in the wake of the increasing professionalisation of football.

This paper explores the application of blockchain technology in the public cultural sector, where adoption remains limited despite its potential. The study identifies major use case scenarios and empirical examples of blockchain adoption in public sector cultural services through a scoping literature review.

A scoping literature review was conducted to map research and conceptual approaches to blockchain technology in the public cultural sector, focusing on key use cases emerging and empirical examples.

The review reveals that while blockchain has the potential to enhance public cultural services, its adoption is still in its early stages. Identified use cases include tokenization of cultural assets, digital rights management and decentralized funding models. Empirical examples in the public cultural sector are sparse, and the impact of the technology remains largely theoretical.

The study is limited by the scarcity of empirical data on blockchain adoption in public cultural services. Future research should focus on in-depth case studies and empirical analyses to understand the practical implications of blockchain in this sector.

Public sector organizations offering cultural services may use these insights to guide blockchain adoption and implementation decisions.

Blockchain adoption in public cultural services has the potential to democratize access, enhance transparency and foster community engagement, contributing to a more inclusive and participatory cultural ecosystem.

This paper contributes to the emerging discourse on blockchain in the public sector, focusing on the often-overlooked cultural services. It highlights the benefits and challenges of blockchain adoption in this sector, providing insights for future research and policy decisions.

Public and private sector organisations are widely endorsing digital transformation processes, but little is known about the level of digitalisation of an organisation as a whole. The purpose of this paper is to develop a framework to assess an organisation’s level of digital transformation as a whole, taking the field of museums as an exemplary case of application.

The framework draws upon a scoping literature review of studies examining dimensions, metrics and methods for the assessment of the digital transformation of organisations. The framework has been validated by applying it to a sample of 400 Italian museums and further interviews with museum directors.

The authors propose an assessment framework composed of five main dimensions: people, technology, process, customer and strategy and investment. These dimensions are further deployed in sub-dimensions measured through a set of questions. The weighted average of results per dimension and sub-dimension supported the development of a composite index of organisational digital readiness.

The developed framework contributes to the current debate on the measurement of an organisation’s level of digital transformation as a whole, and it can offer practitioners a managerial tool to assess the organisation’s digital readiness.