Petra Düren

Leadership in libraries in times of change

Academic as well as public libraries nowadays have to face constant change. This paper gives an overview about leadership competences needed to succeed with deliberate large-scale changes in libraries. Most of the needed competences can already be imparted during undergraduate studies toward a bachelor’s degree in library and information science, as can be seen in the example of the University of Applied Sciences Hamburg. The critical success factors of every change project are information, communication and participation. Two qualitative studies concerning leadership in academic libraries and leadership in academic and public libraries in times of change, as well as a quantitative study in an academic library concerning the influence of a transformational and a transactional leadership style of the top management on the middle management as well as on team members including the influence of the organizational culture, emphasize the importance of these success factors, especially the communication competence of leaders in times of change.

Public management means strategic management: How can libraries fulfil the requirements of the new public management?

Purpose – The New Public Management creates new tasks and challenges for libraries. They have to change from input‐ to output‐management, to develop a strategy, to operationalize this strategy and find key performance indicators to see if the strategic goals are reached or if actions or the strategy itself need to be changed. This paper aims to give one example how these new specifications can be accomplished.Design/methodology/approach – The paper describes the strategy adopted which utilises the balanced scorecard (BSC).Finding – The most important results of this research are that an organizational culture based on trust correlates significantly with the use of the balanced scorecard and accounts for 28 per cent of the use of the BSC as a strategic management system. Also, the transformational as well as the transactional leadership affect the culture based on trust. Transformational leadership accounts for 19.1 per cent and transactional leadership accounts for 16.9 per cent of the organizational cult...

New public management and libraries: a success story or just an excuse for cost reduction

Purpose From the 1980s – in some parts of Europe from the 1990s – onward, the new public management (NPM) has been emerging in public organizations including libraries. Since then, there has been a need to develop strategies, to plan budgets and to implement cost and activity accounting as well as benchmarking to compare the library’s processes, costs and activities with those of other libraries. One basic idea of the NPM was to make a transition from focusing on how institutions function to product orientation, to improve the quality of library services, to develop output orientation and to act market and consumer oriented. There also was a need to change from bureaucratic and hierarchically acting organizations to a more modern flexible and lean form of management. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach The aim of this paper is in the first part to describe the basic ideas of NPM, their realization in libraries and how libraries have to handle constantly reduced budgets and the risk of being closed down (especially in the “age of austerity”); the second part will show how the University of Eastern Finland (UEF) Library has managed to improve its services with the NPM approach. Findings Many libraries are faced with serious financial cutbacks on the one hand and with emergent needs to (re)invest in neglected public infrastructure on the other hand. At the same time, they have to develop modern digital library services. Thus there is a need for efficiency, which is put in action via major budget cutbacks. Also many libraries have been closed down since the implementation of NPM ideas. Originality/value In this paper, the NPM tools used in the restructuring of the UEF are described and the outcome of this modern management is shown.

Comparing the knowledge management practices in selected European higher education libraries

Purpose – Knowledge Management (KM) in libraries refers to the systematic management and control of knowledge as an important resource when producing high-quality library and information services. If one wishes to make the optimal use and dissemination of organizational and other work life related knowledge, then one needs to acquire appropriate KM tools and to adopt a systematic procedure for KM throughout the organization. This can exert an energizing effect on the lifelong learning of the libraries’ staff which is essential in today’s rapidly changing scientific information environment. The purpose of this paper is to analyze KM practices is selected higher education libraries. Design/methodology/approach – This qualitative research conducted in three academic libraries – IZUS/Universitatsbibliothek Stuttgart, Germany; Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona (UAB) Library Barcelona, Spain; and University of Eastern Finland (UEF) Library, Finland – makes a comparison of the KM processes being implemented in e...

Libraries as a Support of Informed Citizens – The Balancing Act Between Library’s Good Quality and Austerity Measures

In a time of rapidly expanding information possibilities, including “fake news”, libraries as guardians of the quality of information have become even more important. In our era, however, it is the guardians of confirmed information themselves and information literate citizens that must be enabled to decide what facts to rely on. At the same time, new public management (NPM) is changing the way libraries, both public and academic, are allowed to act in their local communities. The effect of the “age of austerity” with libraries being closed due to an ongoing economic crisis must also be taken into account. The changing circumstances call for new leadership, new competences and new tasks in libraries. In this paper the authors will present results of European studies on changes in libraries as a result of implementing NPM. While it is evident that the environment and the libraries are changing, it is, however, not clear that the changes are going in only one direction, or how they actually will be impacting the need for more information literate citizens.

Change communication can be so simple! The empathic change communication style

Purpose Deliberate large-scale changes in libraries need an accompanying change management. One of the essential success factors of change management is the communication process, as insensitive communication, using e.g. ambiguous wording or inappropriate tonality can cause great damage throughout the change process. Expert interviews with library managers did show that this change communication does not have to be something elaborate and outstanding using all new technological possibilities, but can be kept simple as the most important factors are to give enough information and to get into a conversation, a personal dialogue with team members. The purpose of this paper is to show the details of a change communication style which enables leaders to cope with deliberate large-scale changes. Design/methodology/approach The empathic change communication style (ECCo-Style) will be analyzed and described on the basis of an extensive literature research as well as a qualitative research on practical experiences of leaders of different hierarchical levels of academic and public libraries during the change processes. Findings The leader’s own action – and with this his or her communication style – has a signaling effect on team members of which each leader needs to be aware of and which can be used to release an enormous pulse, especially during the change processes. Originality/value This ECCo-Style is newly designed.