Azione organizzativa e cultura

PRESENTATION (Paolo de Vita) The importance currently attributed to culture, complexity and change is seen in the fact that such topics are being investigated in spheres which are still relatively virgin territory in organization studies. An example is the sphere of cultural institutions, covering such vaied terrain as schools and universities, museums and libraries, research centres and foundations; in short, institutions large and small which seek to consolidate, elaborate and disseminate knowledge, promoting discussion and cultural awareness and stimulating progress. The institutional, structural, technical and social variety of these organizations certainly makes it hard to view them as a single category featuring homogeneous mechanisms and patterns of behaviour. Nor indeed would this be either constructive or desirable. Hence the author’s decision to use the methodology of case studies, reflecting a growing trend in recent research, is fully justified. This does, however, involve the risk of proceeding from the single case to hasty, contentious generalisations; instead the aim should be to discover chunks of reality and then situate and interpret them in a wider and more productive perspective. This is precisely the task which Luigi Maria Sicca has set himself – and has to our mind successfully accomplished – in this volume. His track record of research into the organizational aspects of institutions engaged in producing and exploiting culture shows admirable constancy and dedication. In this case the field work concerns a prestigious Italian institution which has secured a redoubtable reputation on the international scene over the last decades. Thanks to a robust theoretical reflection grounded in an approach to organizations as a “dynamic structuring process”, this field work has thrown up various topics which are familiar in organization studies but which here receive a stimulating and original treatment. In the specific case of a cultural institution, what is the relationship between promoting culture and being a culture? To what extent and with what consequences can a small organization come to terms with a large and complex environment? How can it maintain its own cultural imprinting and manage the inevitable processes of change and adaptation? What connection can be established between the organizational action (as transpires from a longitudinal case study) and the more tenuous traces of meta-organizational action, detectable prior to and outsi

שנה

2006

שפה

Italian

סדרה

Economia -- 404

הוצאה

F. Angeli

מהדורות

1

עמודים

157

ISBN

9788846471598

מקור הנתונים: Wikidata