Sustainable Cultural Organizations: A Resource- and Capability-Based Analysis of the Istanbul Biennial

Building and sustaining cultural organizations has become an important challenge in cultural management research. This study examines how cultural organizations develop, sustain, and reconfigure strategic resources and capabilities over time through a qualitative case study of the Istanbul Biennial. Drawing on the Resource-Based View (RBV), Knowledge-Based View (KBV), Dynamic Capabilities, and Resource Dependence Theory (RDT), the study analyzes a documentary corpus comprising 34 institutional publications covering eighteen editions of the Biennial through thematic analysis. Findings reveal that organizational sustainability emerges through the continuous development of strategic resources, institutional knowledge, adaptive capabilities, and stakeholder networks. These organizational capabilities have implications beyond organizational continuity, particularly for the reinterpretation of cultural memory, the production of contemporary cultural heritage, and relationships among cultural actors within Istanbul’s broader cultural tourism ecosystem. Rather than treating destination sustainability and resilience as direct outcomes of the Biennial, the study positions these dimensions as broader implications of organizational sustainability within an interconnected cultural and tourism context. Accordingly, the study suggests that the organizational capabilities developed by cultural organizations may contribute to the continuity of cultural production, cultural attractiveness, and stakeholder connectivity at the destination level. The study contributes an integrated framework for understanding cultural organizational sustainability as a dynamic process of resource accumulation, knowledge integration, organizational renewal, and stakeholder coordination, while extending the discussion toward the broader cultural and destination context in which cultural organizations are embedded.