Measuring the efficiency of heritage institutions: Example of historic buildings in Czech Republic

The current society opinion about the public sector is not positive. In general, people perceive the public sphere as an area where the government wastes money or where the public management of non-profit organisations just squanders money provided by the government. We may find this sort of considerations even in the sphere of culture. The goal of this paper is to show that there are a way and a method that can be applied to public institutions for their effective management. It is the application of evaluations in the field of culture which in the future may bring positive results in economic understanding of culture. Culture is often associated with tourism, of which the largest share is the cultural tourism. The main component of cultural tourism is visiting monuments. The basic question in connection with the sights therefore is whether the public manage of these objects is efficient. Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is a widely applied tool in efficiency evaluation for public sector, however it has scarcely been put into use in the case of historic building such as castles and palaces. The article is a response to the growing need to measure performance in all forms of public management. The purpose is to suggest some ways in which it is possible to evaluate the relative performance of activities of cultural monuments on the territory of the Czech Republic, and also to consider whether UNESCO is more effective than classical monuments or not. Scientific plan is based on the belief that castle managers should manage historical monument in order to achieve certain results.