THEATER MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEM – PLANNING AND FINANCIAL ASPECTS

Abstract

The late 20th and early 21st centuries were marked by neoliberal doctrine that, among other things, imposed market laws as the highest regulatory standard to be applied in every field of human action, and even in the arts. Under the auspices of this approach, pressure was placed on cultural institutions to make them profitable and adapt to market principles of business. The circumstances, however, caused at least one positive change - the question of the success of the theater was raised. The concept of New Public Management has made some innovations in evaluating the performance of public institutions through the introduction of the term outcom. OUTCOM is a term that expresses the value a public institution creates and is not measurable by the difference between the value of input and output.

This immeasurability has put cultural institutions in a position that at the same time protects them from the obligation to produce measurable results and thus provides some ease that can be turned into irresponsibility by public funds. At the same time, it (immeasurability) exposes cultural institutions to the pressures to make their actions measurable and even financially viable, often creating in public the image of a part of the public sector that is wasting budget resources.

This paper employs an approach that emphasizes the need to measure measurably but in accordance with the circumstances in which cultural institutions operate - in this case, theater, and to find indirect (if not immediate) indicators that can describe and determine the value of outcom- a.

The basic output elements of the financial model described in this text are planned gross contribution and free cash flow projections by months and for the whole season (year). The most important result is the expected cash flow by months and cumulatively, and in most cases, this amount shows how much money must be externally provided to preserve the theater's liquidity and survival.

It is particularly important to emphasize that the application of this procedure provides the opportunity to design a budget for the production of new plays, linking the invested funds with the possibilities of their return.

The information system whose applicability to theater is derived in this paper very simply and effectively answers the question of the measurability of input and output, two of the three values emphasized by the theory of New Public Management. Thanks to its transparency, it is possible to establish a cost-effective business that would remove the label of irresponsible consumers of state money from public-sector theater institutions and at the same time provide an opportunity for business improvement.