Change management in libraries
Abstract.
Since libraries – academic as well as public – have to face constant change this chapter gives a short overview of the need for change management in libraries as well as the structure of this book. This includes not only theoretical aspects of change management but also several case studies of academic and public libraries which have had to face a deliberate large-scale change recently.
1.1 Why change management?
Libraries nowadays have to face constant change. Budget reductions, new requests from their users, the need to develop strategies, upcoming mergers and relocations, new tasks resulting in the digital library, personnel development, demographic change and quality management are just a few of the challenges for academic and public libraries.
There are three main aspects that influence libraries: new needs and wishes from users, a modern government policy and changing personnel behaviour (see Figure 1.1).
Users’ new needs in academic libraries refer, for example, to the requirement for places to work (alone and in groups) and access to e-books and e-journals combined with high demands on the quality of services (e. g. at the information desk and of the subject specialists) as well as products. Users’ new wishes for the services of public libraries refer, for example, to new media (e. g. e-books and Nintendo Wii games) and the task of libraries to be places for learning (offering, for example, reading promotion, language courses for non-native speakers or courses about how to write a letter of application).
Modern government policy is based on the New Public Management1 and leads, among other things, to budget reductions, mergers, benchmarking and competition between libraries.
Personnel behaviour has changed in recent years. Members of library staff not only want to be well informed about the strategy of the library but also want to participate in the development of their library and in decisions concerning their workplace. Another important change is based on the desire for work-life balance. It should also be taken into account that there are new trends in personnel development resulting from demographic change, e. g. flexible working hours, constant learning as well as occupational health management.
As there will be no chance of successfully implementing change without support and encouragement from library leaders (Kraus et al., 2006), and because change processes might need special leadership skills (Pechlaner et al., 2010), the main questions in this book are:
To be able to successfully fulfil all these new requirements, it is important to integrate leaders of all hierarchies as well as members of the staff in change projects. Therefore it is important to practise modern leadership styles, e.g. transformational in combination with transactional leadership.
In 1999 it had already been noticed that both the change and the transformational leadership perspective needed to be integrated ‘… to gain a greater understanding of how to effectively enact change’ (Eisenbach et al., 1999). This has been achieved in this research project with the main focus on leadership and change in academic and public libraries.
1.2 Structure of the book
In this book the reader will find new ideas and recommendations for leadership styles and modern aspects of leadership in academic and public libraries suitable for different change processes.
Throughout the book the theory of change management is combined with practical experiences. Sources for these are expert interviews with leaders and change managers in academic and public libraries that are currently in a change process or have recently finished a deliberate large-scale change project.
In addition, there are traditional ways of change management as well as modern ideas to implement something new in a library.
Chapter 2 considers general aspects of change management, such as the phases of a change process and elements of change management. It is followed by Part 2 in which 15 case studies are presented. The part starts in Chapter 3 with some statistics about the research process. The case studies then described in Chapters 4 to 8 range from the introduction of a library RFID management system to relocation and merger processes and the implementation of quality management to change as day-to-day business.
Chapter 9 analyses that what can go wrong in change projects, as can be seen in the case studies in Part 2, and how to do it right.
In Chapter 10 the practical experiences are analysed and outlined in new aspects of leadership in reference to change management. This chapter closes with the consideration of a new type of leader, and provides an example of such a leader who grew into this task as a result of various changes in the library.
New leadership styles and tasks are summarised in Chapter 11 where leaders are introduced as change managers who lead in a transformational and transactional leadership style.
The last chapter of this book gives useful tips for the management of libraries in times of change.
1.For the influence of New Public Management on libraries see, for example, Pors and Johannsen (2003) and Düren (2010).