Sustainable Management of the Offer of Cultural Institutions in the Cross-Border Market for Cultural Services—Barriers and Conditions

The concept of sustainable management in culture has been recognised in global strategic documents on sustainable development for more than a decade. It is also increasingly reflected in the cultural polices of particular states, and—very importantly—cultural managers who are responsible for shaping the cultural offer in cities are becoming more interested in this concept. Despite the increasing attention being paid to this topic among both practitioners and theoreticians of management, in none of these documents or other works can we find any content that is directly related to the possibility of applying this concept in a town which, due to political turmoil, has been divided by a national border. Hence, this gap was the direct impulse for taking up research in this field. In the article, by using different notions of the market, our own definition of a cross-border market for cultural services was developed, and the conditions for the functioning of this market were presented based on the example town of Cieszyn (Poland) and Český Těšín (Czech Republic). In the opinion of the authors of the article, the development and functioning of a cross-border market for cultural services is essential for the application of the concept of sustainable management of the cultural offer in a town divided by a border. For the purpose of the article, a survey and individual interviews with experts shaping the cultural offer in Cieszyn and Český Těšín were conducted. The results of the research prove that despite numerous cross-border Czech–Polish projects carried out by cultural institutions, there are still many barriers in the town, which make it difficult for the residents to benefit from the cultural offer that is available on the other side of the border. These barriers limit the full implementation and application of the concept of sustainable management of the cultural offer