Change Leadership Styles and Behaviors in Academic Libraries

Change Leadership Styles and Behaviors in Academic Libraries

John Kennedy Lewis
Copyright: © 2019 |Pages: 12
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-5225-7659-4.ch035
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Abstract

Academic libraries in the 21st century are in the midst of constant and tumultuous change caused by advances in technology, shifting demands of faculty and students, declining budgets, and transformations in publishing and in other methods of acquiring scholarly research. Librarians working in this environment must cope with continuous change while still providing research support to their primary clientele: faculty and students. This chapter addresses the research on change leadership styles and behaviors employed by leaders in academic libraries today. Included in the chapter are reinforcement and transactional leadership, consultative and participatory leadership, participatory and transformational leadership, shared leadership, and self-leadership. The chapter concludes with a review of areas in need of future research.
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Background

Academic libraries have been involved in a process of continuous change over the past thirty years due to the impact of technology on all aspects of librarianship. From the automated card catalog, web based database searching, remote off-campus access, streaming video, downloadable e-books, and patron driven acquisition, advances in technology have continually affected and changed the way librarians perform their jobs. These technological advances have created numerous pressures on librarians ranging from shifting job responsibilities to frequent library reorganizations.

The Disruptive Innovation Era

Libraries remained hierarchical organizations well into the 1960’s. The major shift in academic library organization was the direct result of technological advances. The introduction of the computer to the library workplace was the type of “disruptive innovation” discussed by Christensen (2003) in his seminal work “The Innovator’s Solution.” Academic libraries adopted two new technologies which changed the workplace for librarians: first the online public access catalog (OPAC), followed by online databases. The OPAC changed the way patrons located print materials in the library. It also changed the way librarians performed their duties. By the late 1990’s the majority of academic libraries had switched over to online access of databases (Kenan, 2012). An academic librarian without technological skill cannot function in the 21st century academic library.

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