Managerial rhetoric and arts organizations / Luca Zan.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Zan, Luca.

Standardized Title:

Economia dei musei e retorica del management. English

Language:

English

Italian

Subjects (All):

Arts--Management.

Arts.

Museums--Management.

Museums.

Management.

Physical Description:

xiv, 173 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Basingstoke [England] ; New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.

Summary:

In recent years, the arts, and in particular public sector arts organizations, have faced considerable changes as a result of shifting patterns of cultural consumption, new technologies and administrative processes. Based on extensive field research, this book explores the changes driven by the crisis of the welfare state and the privatization of public entities. It presents a critical analysis of the tensions between managerial rhetoric and professional practices that characterize the arts sector, and questions the extension of managerial rhetoric for the very survival of arts organizations. The book presents the British Museum as a paradigmatic example of the problematic relationship between arts and management. In addition, reference is made to various Italian arts institutions, offering useful insights to arts sector professionals throughout the world who are experiencing a similar transformation of the public sector, privatization, 'companization' and 'managerialization'.

Contents:

Preface to the English Edition viii

Preface to the Italian Edition xi

1 Arts Organizations between Uses and Abuses of Managerial Rhetoric 1

1.1 Management as rhetoric 1

1.2 The controversial extension of economics and management to arts organizations 4

1.3 Management and cultural organizations: a modest approach 7

1.4 A variety of discourses about managing cultural organizations 11

1.5 The multidimensional nature of management of cultural organizations: a framework 16

1.6 Responsibility, accountability and governance structures 21

2 Management and the British Museum: Competing Rhetorics and Identities 30

2.1 Management rhetoric and the British Museum: the Edwards Report 31

2.2 A critique of the Edwards Report from a management studies perspective 39

2.3 Criticism of the Edwards Report's managerial rhetoric from outside academic management studies: the debate in the United Kingdom press 49

2.4 A critique with the benefit of hindsight: changing processes following the Edwards Report 65

3 Managemeat Control and Managerial Rhetoric in Italian Public Sector Cultural Institutions 75

3.1 Management as an iceberg: transcending communication and fundraising 75

3.2 Managerial control: the missing link in the reform of the soprintendenza 77

3.3 True and false managerialism in the transformation of Italian municipal museums 81

3.4 Managerialism and museum standard-setting: another lost opportunity 88

3.5 Beyond the rhetoric of goals: toward a serious focus on resources 90

4 Managerialization of Cultural Organizations and Institutional Settings: the Transformation into Foundations and Managerial Rhetoric 94

4.1 Foundations in the managerialization processes of arts organizations 94

4.2 An international phenomenon with national variations 95

4.3 The Italian case, or the lack of modernization within central and local government from a managerial viewpoint 97

4.4 Beyond the excesses of managerial rhetoric: foundations and the focus on current operations 99

4.5 The Foundation of the municipal museums of Milan: a modest view of the institutional transformation 103

4.6 Managerialization and desetatisation: disciplining the relationship between politics and administration 110

5 Reporting on Performance: the Development of Venetian Municipal Museums in the 1990s 115

5.1 The transformation process of the MCV during the 1990s: a reconstruction 116

5.2 Effectiveness: a more in-depth view 128

5.3 Efficiency and effectiveness: a question of trade-offs 147

5.4 Organizational and institutional settings 150.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 157-167) and index.

ISBN:

0230000223

OCLC:

62152951

Publisher Number:

9780230000223 (cloth)