A Service-Based Systems View of Cultural Heritage

The paper draws attention to an anthropological, rather than idealistic, concept of culture to overcome a traditional ‘Goods-Dominant’ logic, which is especially persistent in Italy and limits the use of cultural heritage, and to broaden the range of value and enhance the merit quality that can be found within the current international vision of cultural heritage as service. To this aims, it proposes a conceptual framework that, through the lens of the Viable Systems Approach, integrates the Service-Dominant logic, the Many-to-many and the Service Science proposals for addressing the change in perspective from a reductionist, goods-based to a servicebased systems management approach. On the basis of this integrated perspective, synthesis schemes are devised to represent the evolutionary pathway that has led to a service logic and a cultural heritage territorial system governance model, which can be adopted to pursue the enhancement of Italian cultural heritage and the valorization of its peculiarities.