The focus of the article is the relationship between history and strategy. Although little interest can be found in mainstream management journals, the hidden relationship between history and strategy is looked for here in a double sense. On the one hand, the article will try to historicise strategy, questioning the alleged discontinuity that is normally used to explain the emergence of the notion itself. More than changes at the ontological level, it is changes at the perspectival level that explain the establishment of the new area of research. The article also discusses possible implications for broader historical research when taking into account some of the hidden distinguishing features of strategy studies and strategising history.

The Italian Ministry of Culture has been undertaking substantial reforms in the last decades, aimed at reorganizing both the museum sector and the local branches of the Ministry, the Superintendence system. By reconstructing the genealogy of these reforms from a management study perspective, the paper points out the overall misunderstanding of human resource issues in their design and implementation. Starting from the Pompeii reform in 1997 up to the Franceschini reform in 2014–2016, the authors focus on the main inconsistencies, omissions and mistakes undermining the effectiveness of change processes. The ‘original sin’ of museum reforms in Italy, mainly due the predominance of a legislative approach and the lack of a management perspective by the ministerial apparatus and law makers, calls for a new approach in organizational and HR terms.

This paper builds on the literature on managerial reforms in the public and cultural heritage sectors with the aim of exploring, understanding, and reconstructing managerial change at the organizational level. It investigates the reform of the cultural sector in Malta – driven by a call for managerial innovation. The main changes in discourse and practices are analyzed; transformation processes are reconstructed on the basis of reported narratives by participants, and critically revisited through a longitudinal analysis of documents. Finally, the Maltese experience is then compared with two other cases of institutional transformation in the cultural heritage field: the British Museum and the Autonomous Superintendence of Pompeii. Common patterns and distinctive features of the three cases are discussed. The paper focuses on a crucial phenomenon in public sector reforms – institutional transformation. From a methodological point of view, the rhetorical nature of these debates is addressed, while providing a more detailed reading of individual components of change processes. The need/benefit of comparison – particularly international comparison – is underlined.