For the UK, the 2008 financial crisis coupled with the subsequent economic austerity programme forced many public institutions to engage in various cost-cutting and fundraising activities. In parallel, corporate ideologies came to dominate how academics, officials and professionals debated public activities, in turn profoundly affecting the provision of communal services. This paper explores how ‘corporate colonization’ (sensu Deetz, 1992), fuelled by austerity, claims public institutions for commercial interests. Drawing on in-depth interviews with senior staff, this paper demonstrates how retrenchment of external support in the UK museum sector has been an uneven process, resulting in the manifestation of three experiential states of corporate colonization: organizational perennity, organizational perseverance, organizational precarity. We thus investigate the differential and uneven ways in which corporate colonization affects organizations pertaining to the UK cultural sector. Overall, we argue that the austerity culture in the UK affects museums in largely negative ways by forcing them to respond to the progressive need to satisfy short-term financial interests.

对于英国而言，2008年的金融危机以及随后的经济紧缩计划迫使许多公共机构从事各种削减成本和筹款活动。同时，公司意识形态开始支配学者，官员和专业人士辩论公共活动的方式，进而对公共服务的提供产生深远影响。本文探讨了在紧缩政策的推动下，“企业殖民化”（sensu Deetz，1992）如何宣称公共机构具有商业利益。本文通过对高级职员的深入采访，证明了英国博物馆部门削减外部支持的过程是一个不平衡的过程，导致出现了企业殖民化的三种体验状态：组织坚韧，组织坚韧，组织不稳定。因此，我们调查了企业殖民地影响与英国文化部门有关的组织的差异和不平衡方式。总体而言，我们认为，英国的紧缩文化迫使博物馆对满足短期财务利益的不断需求做出回应，从而在很大程度上对博物馆产生负面影响。