Much ado about management

The paper takes a critical look at the changes of Italian opera houses, which have been transformed “by law” into private-law Foundation, according to a call for a more managerial attitude in running these organizations. This provides an interesting example in several aspects: on the one hand it shows that similar processes are common to cultural heritage and performing arts organizations; on the other hand, it represent a sort of a textbook example of “how not” managing institutional transformation (such a “worse practice” case is welcome in the context of over recurrent reverence to “best practice” in management studies). By a close reading of the texts of the reform and the specific data concerning one organization focusing on the rhetorical nature of management, the process appears as a sort of oxymoron, where managerial rhetoric is used to introduce higher degrees of bureaucracy. The rather modest impact of the reform is highlighted. While the need for better forms of “industrial organization” of the sector seem to be ignored by the reform, the involvement of private funding in the sector has achieved very minimal results. The introduction of managerial forms of managing – human resources and financial needs and funds in particular – at the level of the individual organization (the Teatro Comunale di Bologna) seems also to a large extent contradictory. Beyond introducing private logic in the public sector, the result seems rather the opposite. Much ado about management, indeed!