In English speaking countries, several social scientists contributed to the origins and evolution of the different strands of organizational studies during the second half of the 20th century and became organization theorists. Organization theory made its way into American universities and business companies thus establishing a dialectic between theory and practical application. Similar developments occurred in France but not in Italy, where only recently, around mid - 2000, public institutions began to show a serious interest in “organization” and its theories. The authors claim that Italy could benefit from drawing on such theories in several ways. The Italian public tourism sector in general, and the one of the Campania region in particular offer ample opportunity for experimentation. The abundance of natural, historical and cultural heritage resources, the employment percentage (20.367 units occupied in the sector -graph 1), the organizational bottlenecks and the high incidence of political decision makers summarize the sector’s distinctive features. Campania(fig. 1) is second only to Lazio for tourist attractiveness and number of people employed and yet exhibits a negative trend of 28% in terms of revenue mostly connected to the many organizational problems and the weak organization culture. The new decision makers have initiated a competitiveness enhancing reform and the SWOT analysis (tables 2 and 3) highlights the shift in the logic informing the system from bureaucratic (fig 2) to competitive (fig 3). The reform is concerned with professional skills, management capabilities and training needs and has yielded the first results but the process is still in progress.
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