Telling the Story of Culture's Value: Ideal-Type Analysis and Integrated Reporting

This article aims to encourage the reunion of economics and sociology in respect of culture's value underway in the work of David Stark and Michael Hutter. It proposes cultural reporting as an important domain it might address. Using Weberian ideal-type analysis, it examines the distinctive mode of contemporary cultural provision. I argue there are features of modern bureaucratic systems which account for the significant failures seen today. I introduce the Integrated Reporting Framework and explain its basic principles. <IR> has the capacity to streamline cultural reporting and equip it with appropriate narrative accounts, mitigating the reductive aspects of bureaucratic evaluation.