ABSTRACT
Based on 15 years of fieldwork done by a group of scholars at the Gradual degree in Innovation and Organization of Culture and the Arts (GIOCA) Research Centre, Department of Management, University of Bologna, this book investigates the issue of managing cultural heritage from an international perspective. Whilst many fields have become managerialized' in recent decades, there are distinct traditions of planning and management studies within several fields, including business, organizational studies, urban planning and industrial engineering. Very often the Administrative Director of an Italian museum has a degree in law, without basic training in accounting, not to say management concepts. The kind of ethnography of administrations' approach seems to fit particularly well into the broader trend towards weakening the Western bias of heritage discourses that is taking place at the international level. Cultural policy' can in fact refer to very different issues, from what might be better labelled as administrative policies for culture.
