New self-evaluation framework aims to turn museums into engines of systemic change

Museums across Europe are under growing pressure to prove not just that they manage their collections well, but that they genuinely change lives. A new study published in the European Journal of Cultural Management and Policy argues that the sector has been measuring the wrong things in the wrong way, and it offers a strikingly different alternative: the Museums of Impact, or MOI, framework, a self-evaluation tool built by and for museum professionals that treats impact not as a scorecard but as an engine of organisational transformation.

The research, led by Pirjo Hamari of the Finnish Heritage Agency together with Pille Runnel and Agnes Aljas of the Estonian National Museum and Petri Uusikylä of the University of Vaasa, emerges from the Museums of Impact project funded by the European Commission’s Creative Europe programme between 2019 and 2022. Rather than starting from academic theory alone, the team used an abductive, iterative design that moved continuously between empirical observation, practical development workshops and theoretical interpretation, engaging more than 1,000 museum professionals across Europe in co-creation workshops before piloting draft versions in six museums of varying size, ambition and national context.

The starting point for the framework is a diagnosis of how museum development is currently practised. The authors identify three interrelated approaches that dominate the field. The managerial approach treats the operating environment as predictable and stable, prioritises supply-driven planning, values hierarchical expertise and relies on quantified performance indicators and accreditation. The audience-centric approach, which gained momentum as public funding declined, reorients museums around visitors as active participants in knowledge production, emphasising co-creation, service responsiveness and outcome-oriented feedback. The systems approach, the least institutionalised of the three, views museums as dynamic, complex and interdependent entities in which the whole exceeds the sum of its parts, favouring collective intelligence, networked leadership and long-term public value over linear cause-and-effect planning.

Crucially, the authors stress that these are not competing ideologies but complementary organisational logics that coexist in every institution. Each museum must balance managerial, audience and public demands, and each approach implies a different relationship with uncertainty. Where the managerial model copes with change through forecasting and scenario planning, the audience-centric model demands agility, and the systemic model embraces turbulence by emphasising interdependence and cascading effects. The MOI framework is deliberately designed to work across all three, making the underlying assumptions of each visible rather than imposing a single template.

What distinguishes the MOI framework from existing tools such as the Arts Council England Impact and Insight Toolkit or national accreditation schemes is its direction of travel. Those instruments, the authors argue, are oriented towards external assessment, benchmarking and post-delivery measurement of results. The MOI framework instead operates as an internally driven developmental tool, drawing on Michael Patton’s concept of developmental evaluation, which supports social innovators working in complex, uncertain environments by providing real-time feedback that feeds a continuous development loop. In contrast to positivist evaluation theory, developmental evaluation does not prioritise statistical objectivity or the independence of the evaluator; it embeds evaluation inside the organisation’s own learning processes.

Structurally, the framework consists of two sections and eight modules containing 151 evaluative statements. Four Enabler modules examine internal organisational dimensions: impact goals and strategy, organisational culture and competences, resources and service development, and digital engagement. Four Impact modules address the museum’s broader societal role: communities and shared heritage, relevant and reliable knowledge, societal relevance, and sustainable organisations and societies. Each statement is scored on a scale from one to five, where one signals that a topic is insufficiently addressed and five indicates it is well established and evidence-backed. The scoring is not meant to produce a ranking but to surface strengths and development priorities through structured dialogue.

The evaluation process unfolds in three stages: preparation, facilitation and reflection. The modular design allows institutions to engage with individual modules, subtopics or selected statements rather than attempting the entire framework in one intensive session, and there is no prescribed way to use it. Once the evaluation is complete, a complementary Development Workbook guides museums through five practical steps: identifying a limited number of development goals, describing concretely what must change, mapping information gaps, clarifying resources and responsibilities, and setting the urgency of the development timeline. The framework is available in three usable formats with guidelines published by the Network of European Museum Organisations.

Two use cases illustrate the framework’s reach. A small Estonian local museum with only two employees used the tool to build an organisational strategy, and the process extended beyond internal reflection to involve the local municipality and other stakeholders, at one point spilling into the local newspaper as roles and expectations were negotiated. According to a museum staff member quoted in the study, the model enabled the staff, municipality and partners to jointly discuss all areas of museum work, agree on key communities and impact goals, and open discussions on sustainability and access, allowing the museum to look beyond purely economic aspects. Separately, the Finnish Music Archives applied the framework alongside the Europeana Impact Playbook, finding that although the 151 statements were designed for museums, most transferred well to a small archival organisation and surfaced perspectives that might otherwise have gone unnoticed.

The theoretical ambition of the paper goes beyond tool-building. The authors frame the framework through three interconnected concepts: impact, public value and developmental evaluation. Impact is defined as the portion of total outcomes that occurred as a result of an organisation’s activity, above and beyond what would have happened anyway, encompassing educational, economic, social and cultural dimensions. Public value refers to benefits a museum creates beyond the immediate experience of its visitors, from educational opportunity and shared civic space to environmental sustainability and support for local tourism and creative industries. Museums, the authors note, operate simultaneously as cultural, public and economic institutions, and these roles can conflict, requiring negotiation in daily operations.

The learning theory underpinning the framework draws on Argyris and Schön’s hierarchy of single-loop, double-loop and triple-loop learning. Single-loop learning asks whether things are being done correctly; double-loop learning asks whether the right things are being done by examining root causes; triple-loop learning, or meta-learning, asks how we know we are doing the right things at all. The managerial approach typically operates at the single-loop level, the audience-centric approach combines single and double loops, and the systemic approach demands the continuous reflection and sense-making of triple-loop learning. The authors argue that shifting museums from a performance mindset of doing things right to an impact-oriented posture of doing the right things is the framework’s central contribution.

The authors are candid about limitations. Participatory development requires openness, reflection and what the study calls courageous discussions, and moving from linear, museum-centric development to a systemic one demands time, knowledge, leadership and appropriate tools. The framework is explicitly not a quality accreditation scheme or a traditional impact measurement instrument; it complements such approaches by addressing the larger organisational context in which impact is created. Yet its grounding in practice, its flexibility across institutions from two-person local museums to national archives, and its positioning of museums as the drivers of their own transformation suggest a sector beginning to rethink how change happens, not merely how it is reported. Whether the framework can catalyse genuinely systemic change across a fragmented European museum landscape remains an open question, but the study offers both the conceptual map and the practical toolkit for the journey.

Subject of Research: A co-created self-evaluation framework for organisational change and societal impact in museums

Article Title: The MOI impact framework: a catalyst for systemic change in museums

Article References: Hamari, P., Runnel, P., Uusikylä, P., & Aljas, A. (2026). The MOI impact framework: a catalyst for systemic change in museums. European Journal of Cultural Management and Policy, 16, Article 15698. https://doi.org/10.3389/ejcmp.2026.15698

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/ejcmp.2026.15698

Keywords: museums, impact evaluation, organisational change, developmental evaluation, systems thinking, public value, cultural management, self-evaluation, museum management, organisational learning, Creative Europe, heritage