The
schedule is a section of this
magazine where business archives and museums are described,
focusing more on their institutional and constitutive
features than on their contents.
Often contents are already made known through meetings,
exhibits, and even records produced by the business
itself. On the other hand, little attention is paid
to other highly significant data:
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the reasons why business
archives and museums were created; |
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their institutional framework;
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their integration within
business’ operational activity; |
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the financial matters;
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the professional training
of their managers; |
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the quality and quantity
of the services that are offered to the business
itself and to the public. |
These data are of great interest, paving the way
for business archives and museums to further develop
within the Italian business system and be recognized
as a vital part of the business culture –unfortunately,
a scenario that is uncertain at present. Companies
often disregard their historical records when seeking
to define their own core culture; and focus on recent
changes in management styles, or on the turnover
of managers with different educational backgrounds.
Paradoxically, in searching for the original features
of their culture, companies may provide a great
amount of resources for business consultancy and
training, while leaving their archives in the poorest
conditions.
And not only that. Over the last 30 years, the
trend for investing in business heritage has proved
to be rather unstable. Second thoughts and doubts
come up in relation to an array of variables, and
these affect a company’s strategic decisions.
It is important to be conscious of these interactions,
in order to support the growth and development of
business archives and museums. Why continue to blame
their scarcity on the cultural delay of Italian
companies? It might make sense from a moral point
of view, but is of no practical use.
In compiling this new section of «Culture
e impresa», we know that it won’t
be always possible to collect the data we need:
sometimes records may be unrecognisable, or contain
classified information. Therefore we expect a certain
extent of partiality from our sources. Nevertheless,
this approach permits us to understand how an entrepreneur
– the brain of a business – came to
recognize historical records as an integral part
of a project as a whole, and how she or he was able
to fruitfully exploit them.
