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The purpose of this paper is to understand how funders and stakeholders influence the performance of Spain’s most autonomous cultural institutions. As the first of its kind to focus on Spain’s independent cultural spaces, the paper is exploratory in nature. It seeks to contribute to the field of research on best practices in cultural management and marketing through its study of the performance of all seven independent cultural spaces that belong to the Red TransIbérica de Espacios Culturales Independientes.

The paper employs a mixed-methods case study analysis. Relying on in-person observations and interviews, online surveying, online review analyses and cultural engagement data synthesis, it supports quantitative data with qualitative data, and uses methodological triangulation techniques to validate findings.

The paper indicates that despite their autonomy, the type of funding and the number of stakeholders that independent cultural spaces boast appear related to their marketability.

Using all seven member organizations as the sample group, this research is able to build generalized conclusions for the country’s population of independent cultural spaces. By highlighting key themes for further research, the paper offers insight into an understudied section of the sector.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the formation of two artist-led collective actors, Koalition der Freien Szene (KFS) and Haben and Brauchen (H&B), and their differing strategies of political critique towards Berlin’s cultural policy-making complex. The paper seeks to contribute to the lack of empirical case studies on Berlin’s cultural governance and cultural policy stakeholders by creating a self-designed framework for analysis of artist-led organizations’ formulation of political claims and how their articulations find entrance into policy-making.

The paper’s theoretical framework is situated at the intersection between new social movement studies, post-positivist policy analysis and discursive institutionalism. Methodologically, the paper is based on qualitative interviews with members of KFS, H&B and relevant cultural stakeholders from Berlin’s contemporary arts scene.

The paper identifies five differentiating axes of political critique through a self-designed framework. These include: political or constitution-like program, personnel infrastructures determining decision-making, approach to cultural administration, strategic agenda and activity in a collective action framing scheme. Furthermore, the paper illustrates the (trans)formative potentialities for Berlin’s future cultural policy due to complementarity of discursivity and operative action, of pragmatism and utopian thinking.

The practical implications of the paper provide guidance for cultural policymakers to better systematize modes of participatory policy-making.

This paper gives an overview of current developments and shifts in Berlin’s cultural field through the emergence of new collective actors by providing unique stakeholder-centered perspective(s). Furthermore, through an empirically grounded, self-designed analytical framework, a systematic analysis of articulatory and communicative strategies and the practices of new cultural policy stakeholders is provided.

The purpose of this paper is to extend research on contemporary forms of oversight surrounding professional work in an era characterized by increased skepticism regarding professional claims and the rise of independent regulatory authorities. The authors investigate the interplay between key actors as well as the shifting role boundaries in a distinct regulatory space, following the introduction of a new public oversight framework.

The analysis draws on the notions of regulatory space and boundary work to better understand the development of independent audit oversight in France. The authors adopted an interpretive approach to conduct a longitudinal case study based on 33 interviews and documentary data produced from 2003 to 2012.

The study provides a narrative of the boundary work carried out by the French audit profession as it tried to reinvent its role in the new regulatory order. In the case, boundary work engendered a hybrid regulatory pattern, named “co-regulation,” reflecting both the logic of independent regulation and the logic of self-regulation. The main consequence of this is that zones of mutual involvement were constructed – thereby suggesting that to become a reality, independent oversight of professional work needs to accept some operational dependence from professionals.

The study illustrates the elusiveness of boundaries surrounding actors’ role within contemporary forms of professional regulation. More generally, hybrid development suggests that professions are proactive and, to some extent, successful when it comes to developing alliances and manipulating changes within their regulatory space.

The purpose of this paper is to propose an initial, exploratory and tentative theoretical construct related to the current consumption of landscape as a key symbolic and physical element in territorial representation and evocation, and for the deployment of place branding strategy. It constructs a line of argument to support what shall be referred to as “landscape branding”, that is, the paradigmatic role of landscape in place branding. It is, therefore, of interest to define the value of landscape as a social and cultural construction, which is why the paper awards importance to the specific analysis of their capacity for visual and/or aesthetic evocation within the context of a general branding strategy for geographical spaces.

To develop a sufficient proposal for sustaining “a theory of landscape branding”, the paper deploys a meta-analysis, that is, an extensive review and interpretation of the literature related to visual landscape and place branding, to propose a tentative initial approach to landscape-infused place branding theory.

The relationship existing between landscape images and texts and their possible situating and subsequent interpreting within the context of the political, cultural and economic logics of contemporary society give rise to a renewed analytical framework for cultural geographies (Wylie, 2007). At this point, place branding becomes a recurring argument for the consumption of carefully staged places, representing, to use Scott’s terms (2014), the arrival of a cognitive-cultural capitalism characteristic of post-Fordism.

From a practical perspective, the landscape branding approach provides several benefits. First of all, regardless of the fact that many commentators have argued that logos, slogans and advertising campaigns are relatively ineffective in place branding, practitioners still seem to be focussed on these visual design and advertising tools. The landscape branding approach facilitates an identity-focussed perspective that reconfirms the importance of linking reality with perception and hence reinforces the need to link place branding to policy-making, infrastructure and events.

Landscapes’ imageability facilitates visual storytelling and the creation of attractive symbolic actions (e.g. outdoor events/arts in attractive landscape and augmented reality or landscaping itself). This is the type of imaginative content that people easily share in social media. And, of course, landscape branding reiterated the importance of experience. If policymakers and publics alike understand this considerable symbolic value of landscape, it might convince them to preserve it and, hence, contribute to sustainability and quality of life.

The novelty lies not in the familiar use of visual landscape resources to promote places, but in the carefully orchestrated construction of gazes, angles, representations, narratives and interpretations characteristic of geographic space, which somehow hijack the spontaneous gaze to take it to a certain place. Everything is perfectly premeditated. According to this, the visual landscape represents a critical point as a way of seeing the essence of places through a place branding strategy. In this sense, that place branding which finds in visual landscape a definitive argument for the projection of aspirational places imposes a new “way of seeing” places and landscape based on a highly visual story with which to make a particular place desirable, not only for tourism promotion purposes but also with the intention of capturing talent, infrastructures and investment, among other objectives.

The purpose of this paper is to examine attempts at jurisdictional expansion in the audit field. Specifically, the authors critically analyse the professional implications of “new audit spaces”, that is, novel auditing and assurance services that have emerged at intersections between audit and other fields such as the environment, the public sector, sport and education. The purpose is two-fold. First, to better understand the dynamics of new audit spaces, and second, to highlight the major challenges and adaptations prompted by these dynamics.

Drawing on Bourdieu’s theory of practice, the authors highlight and problematise four issues central to the construction of new audit spaces: independence; reporting; professional accreditation; and the nature of the audit role.

The audit profession has experienced mixed success in seeking to annex new audit spaces; in some instances, practices initially located at the margins of auditing have moved towards its centre, while elsewhere projects have been abandoned, colonised by others or remain in flux. In these ventures, the accounting profession is brought into competition with other bodies of expertise and modes of practice. In new audit spaces, core elements of auditing, as conventionally conceived, are transmogrified as they travel.

This analysis calls into question some of the “sacred cows” of auditing and challenges the transferability of the capitals and habitus of the accounting profession in other domains. Future research avenues are suggested.