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1.1
Preface
The first edition of this book was published in 1977. That edition, co-authored by Robert D. Stueart and John T. Eastlick, was designed to fill a need for a basic management textbook for library and information science (LIS) students. At the time it was published, there was little material available about library management, and LIS faculty who taught library management courses had either to assign textbooks intended for students in public administration or business management or to compile a reading list of selected material on management from various sources. During the more than 40 years since the publication of the first edition of Library Management, libraries and information ser vices have changed dramatically and each new edition of this textbook has reflected these changes in both libraries and in their external environment. The ninth edition of this text is very dif ferent from the one that was published in 1977, but its purpose is the same—to provide in one volume a comprehensive introduction to all the most impor tant functions in library management for not only LIS students but also for beginning library managers.
Each edition of the book has introduced new material and features. In the early editions before the internet, a large portion of each volume was devoted to examples of forms, charts and documents used by managers. More recently, those examples have been included in the companion Web site to the textbook. This new edition reflects the helpful feedback we have gotten from LIS faculty both in the United States and internationally who use the textbook in their courses. In preparing this revision, the authors have continued to draw freely from writing and research in cognate fields, including business management, public administration, and many areas of the social sciences. Although all of our chapters have been revised and updated, we have expanded the chapter on budgeting, with more real life examples and added a grant writing section to the fundraising chapter
This edition continues to provide numerous opportunities through case studies, role-plays, and simulations for experiential learning to enable students or beginning managers to apply their knowledge to real world problems or situations. In this latest edition, we have added more activities to allow students to interact with one another and to participate in managerial-related exercises. In this new addition, each chapter begins with “Chapter Takeaways” which lists the most impor tant concepts covered in that chapter. Another new feature, “Management on the Job” is located near the beginning
xiii
of each chapter and presents up-to- date examples of the application of the management function covered in that chapter in various library settings. This edition, also has added two new features to the end of each chapter: first a “Practice What You Have Learned” section, that allows students to apply the concepts from the chapter to their own experiences, and second, a “Discussion Questions” section, that poses challenging questions for students to discuss with one another. More of these experiential activities such as in-basket exercises, case studies and simulations, which can complement and supplement the material presented in the book can be found on the volume’s companion Web site.
We hope that LIS faculty, students, and managers will find the material in the volume helpful. We have enjoyed writing this ninth edition and hope that our book will provide insight and perspective on this impor tant function of management in library and information organ izations.
Section 1 Introduction
It has become a cliché to say that constant change is the new normal, but we are certainly living in a period of time when the pace of change has increased dramatically. Organizations of all types are struggling to stay ahead of transformations that often threaten their traditional ways of doing things, realizing that those organ izations that do not adapt will likely not survive. In 2015, Udo Gollub, a German entrepreneur and CEO, provided an interesting perspective on the consequences of not being able to adapt quickly. He used Kodak, which just a few years ago was a household name in cameras and film, as an example of an organization that was not able to adapt rapidly enough. In 1998, Kodak employed over 170,000 employees and was the source of 85 percent of all photo paper sold worldwide. However, in just a few years its business model was completely destroyed, and the company entered bankruptcy. Kodak was too slow to change in response to the advent of digital photography, which constituted a transformative change in the environment for photography. This change almost resulted in the demise of an organ ization that had existed as a leader in its field for over 100 years. Gollub speculates that what “happened to Kodak will happen in a lot of industries in the next 10 years— and most people don’t see it coming.”1
Gollub described other transformative changes that he thinks will become mainstream in just a few years, advances that will pose the same threats to the traditional practices of many existing organ izations that digital photography did to Kodak. These are trends to which today’s managers need to be responding to now if they want their organ izations to remain viable. Some of these changes are:
Software
Organ izations are now defined by software and not by what they actually own. Uber is now the biggest taxi company in the world, and Airbnb the biggest hotel company. Uber owns no taxis and Airbnb no hotels.
Artificial Intelligence Computers are becoming exponentially better at defining the world. Legal and
Driverless Cars
3D Printing
Work
Agriculture
medical advice is available from IBM Watson with higher accuracy than advice given by humans. Facebook now has software that is able to recognize faces better than humans can.
In just a few years, driverless cars will be available to the public. This innovation may bankrupt the traditional auto industry as new entrants such as Tesla and Google begin to envision cars as computers on wheels.
The price of the least expensive 3D printer has dropped dramatically, and soon smartphones will be able to scan in 3D. For example, soon you will be able to scan your feet and print a perfect pair of shoes at home. Within a decade, 10 percent of all goods manufactured will be 3D printed.
In the next two decades, 70 to 80 percent of the jobs that now exist will disappear. There will be new jobs, but it is less clear what they will be and how many there will be.
Farmers will be freed from working all day in their fields with the development of a $100 agricultural robot.
Currency Bitcoin will become mainstream and might become the default reserve currency.
Education
Solar
The cheapest smartphone already costs only $10 in Africa and Asia. Soon almost everyone will own a smartphone that can provide access to first- class educational information.
Solar power will continue to grow exponentially. The price of energy will drop so much that all coal companies will be defunct in a few years.
The changes listed above are all speculations, but they are grounded in reality. Although they may not occur within the time frame predicted by Gollub, it is highly likely they all will occur. Most of them are already beginning to happen. All organ izations that exist today will feel the impact of one or more of these transformative changes and likely will be impacted by others that we are not yet able to foresee. Man agers are facing the need to stay ahead of these changes while at the same time encountering more competition in terms of funding and support than ever before. Some of the transformations faced by organ izations are the result of demographic and other changes, but most have been the result of the dizzying pace of change in technology that has occurred in the past few decades.
Just as organ izations were transformed after the advent of the industrial revolution of the 18th century, we now are entering a new industrial
revolution. This new era has been given various names including the Digital Revolution, the Second Machine Age2 and the Fourth Industrial Revolution3, but whatever you call it, the indications are that this new era is poised to bring fundament alterations the way we live and work. The first industrial revolution was triggered in the mid-1700s by the advent of the steam engine that allowed many processes that had previously been done by hand to be mechanized. The second arrived about 100 years later when electric power began to be used to drive mass production. The third industrial revolution began in the late 1960s and was based on electronic technology that provided new ways of generating, pro cessing, and sharing information. The fourth industrial revolution, unlike its predecessors, is not based on a single technology but instead is a coming together of a number of technologies; this fusion of technologies is blurring the lines between the physical, digital, and biological spheres.4 As a report from the World Economic Forum states, “Developments in genetics, artificial intelligence, robotics, nanotechnology, 3D printing and biotechnology, to name just a few, are all building on and amplifying one another. This will lay the foundation for a revolution more comprehensive and all- encompassing than anything we have ever seen.”5
Today’s organizations have already been affected by the changes brought about by the information technology associated with the third industrial revolution. Few organizations have been transformed as much as libraries, which have experienced change in almost every area of responsibility and activity. These already transformed organ izations will face further changes during the Fourth Industrial Revolution. At least for the immediate future, libraries will need to continue many of the legacy functions they have always performed while at the same time implementing the new ser vices needed to meet the information needs of the 21st century user. Today’s library managers must be able to respond rapidly and flexibly to this new environment. Good management has always been impor tant for libraries, but it will be even more critical as they face the challenges of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
This book examines the current management practices in libraries and other types of information agencies. It will discuss both current thinking about management and some of the principles developed over the past centuries that still provide a framework for thinking about modern organizations. The first chapter of the textbook will begin with a general overview of the skills and competencies needed by modern managers. This chapter is followed by a historical overview that provides a retrospective look at the roots of modern management. The third chapter focuses on change and its impact on organ izations.
Library and Information Center Management provides an introduction to the principles of management, but serves only as a foundation. Although the principles of management can be imparted, the practice of management really cannot be taught—it must be learned through experience. This book will acquaint you with the basic principles, concepts, and techniques of management. It will also teach you the professional vocabulary of management, but if you are interested in becoming a manager, you must continue to learn. It is hoped that this book will cause you to become interested in becoming a manager yourself, because good management is critical to the success of all organ izations.
Notes
1 Udo Gollub’s Facebook Page, April 22, 2015 https://www.facebook com /udo gollub /posts /10207978845381135
This citation itself provides an interesting illustration of some of the changes that IT has brought to intellectual property. The original post was a Facebook entry written after Gollub attended an event at Singularity University. The original post was widely shared and liked. Interestingly, soon after, the exact same post then began appearing on the Internet with other individuals purporting to be the author. As far as I can tell, Gollub was the original author of this post.
2 Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee. The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies. (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2014).
3. Nicholas Davis, “What is the Fourth Industrial Revolution?” World Economic Forum, January 19, 2016, https://www.weforum.org /agenda / 2016 / 01 /what -is -the -fourth-industrial-revolution /.
4 . Klaus Schwab, “ Will the Fourth Industrial Revolution Have a Human Heart?” World Economic Forum, 2015, https://agenda.weforum org / 2015 /10 /will-the -fourth-industrial-revolution-have -a-human-heart -and-soul
5 Klaus Schwab and Richard Samans“ Future of Jobs” World Economic Forum, 2016, http://reports.weforum.org /future - of-jobs-2016 /preface /.
1 Managing in Today’s Libraries
Chapter Takeaways
After reading this chapter you should:
• Understand why managers are impor tant in all organ izations
• Be familiar with the most common functions that managers perform
• Be able to discuss the roles that managers play in organ izations
• Be familiar with the three levels of management and the skills needed in each
• Know the major differences between managing in the for-profit and the not-for profit sectors
• Be able to identify some of the challenges faced by today’s managers
Libraries existed in the ancient world and still retain their importance in the modern information age. Throughout history, as libraries have developed in various nations and cultures, they have all shared a defining characteristic: they provide access to information that has been recorded on some type of medium. Over the years, the medium has changed, from stone slabs to clay tablets, from papyrus and palm leaves to vellum, from scrolls to hand- copied books, and, most recently, from printed paper to interactive electronic and multimedia resources.
It is easy to imagine the concern felt by librarians in ancient times as scrolls were superseded by the new technology of books. Such concerns still exist to this day as modern hybrid libraries supplement or replace their print resources with electronic ones. For librarians, however, the format in which the information is recorded is far less impor tant than whether patrons can
retrieve and access this information efficiently and effectively. To make that retrieval and access as smooth as possible, librarians need to create suitable environments by employing appropriate methods of management.
Management on the Job: Management Challenges in Rural and Small Town Libraries
Much of the library management literature focuses on large, well-funded libraries. However, almost 90 percent of public libraries in the United States are small ones, located in towns with populations of 50,000 or fewer. In 2015, Rachel K. Fischer surveyed managers in some of these small libraries to identify the management challenges they were facing. Budgets were a big problem for most of these managers. The majority of the libraries had bud gets of under $250,000 per year. Because of low bud gets, some man ag ers reported problems such as restricted hours of opening, low salaries, and difficulties in keeping up with technology. The good news, however, was that over two thirds of the libraries had received budget increases within the last five years.
All the libraries had small staffs and most had only one managerial level position. These library managers reported being unable to do a lot of marketing but nonetheless most reported their libraries were valued by the communities. The respondents stated that keeping up with technological change was especially challenging. Two technological areas in which these libraries were lagging behind were lending e-readers and having a suitable Web site. The respondents to the survey described a number of management challenges. Leading the list was staffing—there are not enough people to do all that needs to be done. Some are not able to hire librarians with master’s degrees. Other challenges reported frequently were budget/funding, marketing/PR/advocacy, time management, human resources issues, technology, Board of Trustees, building maintenance, and volunteers.1
Small libraries face their own set of management challenges but not all their problems are found exclusively in small institutions. How do the management challenges of small libraries differ from those of larger organ izations? What do you think the major differences in managerial responsibilities are between the two types of libraries? Would you prefer to work in a large organ ization or in a smaller one?
The Importance of Management
Libraries and other information-intense enterprises have, over the years, adopted many management principles that originated in business, industry, and government. In some cases, libraries have been required to do so as when, for example, they are part of a government structure or other large organ ization. Usually, however, library managers borrow established management principles from the nonlibrary world in order to make their organizations more successful.
Of course, most libraries are not businesses; almost all libraries are nonprofit organ izations. Nevertheless, all enterprises, whether for-profit or nonprofit, must provide a product to customers or clients, deliver consistent and efficient ser vice, give employees and employers a sense of well-being, and foster an attractive and healthy environment. A well-managed library accomplishes all of these objectives far better than one that is poorly managed. Effective organ izations cannot rest on past success. Instead, they must focus on quality and customer satisfaction, must respond quickly to changes
in the external environment, must be creative and innovative, and must be committed to continuous learning. Libraries will need to continue to change in order to succeed in the future as they face the challenges of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
Talk About It
Look at the predicted changes listed in Section 1: Introduction and discuss which of those changes have already had an impact on libraries. Which are likely to have an impact in the future? Do you think today’s libraries are adequately prepared to meet the challenges of the Fourth Industrial Revolution? If not, what else should they be doing?
The most effective organ izations use their available resources to maintain a competitive advantage. In the past, libraries had almost a total monopoly on information provision and were funded because they were considered a public “good”; however, in today’s environment, libraries must compete with numerous other nonprofits for public support. In addition, their position is being eroded by the growing influence of the private information sector. As a result, libraries are being forced to behave more and more like for-profit institutions, sometimes even charging for ser vices that were formerly free. In the private sector, individual companies are accustomed to attempting to outperform their competitors in order to survive; competitive advantage is the edge a company has over its rivals in generating greater value for the organization and its shareholders. Libraries are beginning to focus on their own competitive advantage. Although libraries do not typically have to compete against other libraries, they do need to use every possible means available to demonstrate that they are able to generate value for the investment made in them by their stakeholders. They now need to demonstrate their competitive advantage, and good library managers target available resources to compete successfully. The measures used to demonstrate competitive advantage typically are quality of product offered, efficiency, responsiveness to patron needs, and innovation in terms of continuing to respond to new demands in the market.2
Almost all libraries have attempted to incorporate the elements of competitive design into their operations. The quality of the product offered by today’s libraries continues to improve. Digitization has made it possible for libraries to offer products never possible before, and these products are highly attractive to library patrons. Many libraries are innovating and offering ser vices and products that have not been available before. Libraries increase their efficiency when they use fewer resources (such as people) to produce their goods or ser vices. The IT revolution has increased productivity of all workers, and recent cutbacks in library funding have led to an increase in responsibility and workload at all levels. Most of today’s libraries are much more efficient than in the past. They are doing more with fewer employees. Libraries have become increasingly customer- oriented and are very responsive to patron needs. It is common for librarians to do market research and find out what ser vices and collections their patrons would like to have offered. This new emphasis on customer ser vice, quality, and efficiency has resulted in better libraries for all.
However, any good manager knows that libraries cannot excel at all of these elements at once. Pressure to increase orga nizational per for mance can
be beneficial because it does force an organ ization to rethink its priorities and practices. However, too much pressure to increase efficiency can be harmful. It produces great stress on employees and can result in managers trying to cut corners in any way possible to contain costs. As Maurice Line, a British library consultant, pointed out:
Improved productivity and service can hardly continue forever. It is rather like athletic records: they continue to be broken, but less and less frequently and by smaller and smaller margins. At the same time, the body is put under increasing stress, with sometimes permanent damage to muscles, tendons, bones and internal organs. Similarly, as ‘progress’ continues to be made with products and services, margins of advantage are certain to diminish, and industries drive themselves and their staff harder and harder into the ground.”3
If the library workforce continues to shrink as a result of budgetary cutbacks, the quality of ser vices offered and responsiveness to patrons’ needs will inevitably decline. There is a need to have balance between the various elements of competitive advantage.
Practice Your Skills
Identify a library or information center that you know well. How does it demonstrate the elements of competitive advantage? Do you think that this organization is able to balance the various elements of competitive advantage or is the drive to become more efficient having an impact on the other elements?
FIGURE 1.1. Elements of Competitive Advantage
Modern libraries continue to adjust to the changing climate in which they operate. Libraries are just emerging from the worst economic recession since the Great Depression and they have been forced to reevaluate their business model to be competitive in the changing marketplace. This reevaluation serves a useful purpose.4 Because of their long history, libraries have tended to follow practices that have worked effectively in the past, and often organ izations that have been successful in the past become disinclined to innovate and hence less able to meet the dynamic needs of customers. The challenges that libraries are facing today provide them with an opportunity to reenvision their roles and responsibilities so they can remain viable. To compete with the burgeoning— and often aggressive—information industry, library managers will need to be adaptable, always remaining open to new methods and techniques.
Over the years, as libraries have become larger, the importance of good management has grown accordingly. Major national, public, and academic libraries are in many ways the equivalent of large for-profit corporations. Library directors who, in the past, were often scholars are necessarily becoming more like chief executive officers (CEOs). Directors of large libraries are responsible for enormous budgets. In 2015, the Library of Congress had a budget of over $631 million.5 The Library of Congress is one of the world’s largest, so its substantial bud get is not typical. Nonetheless, it is very common for managers in all types of libraries to deal with multimillion- dollar budgets, and regardless of the size of the budget, knowing how to secure and manage funding is critical to any institution’s success.
Despite its large budget, the Library of Congress is like other libraries in that it recently has been forced to make hard choices between competing priorities. From 2010 to 2015, the Library’s total appropriation decreased by more than $53 million or 8 percent.6 Therefore, managers in both large and small libraries must not be only able to work with budgets that remain the same but with those that are shrinking. In addition to their financial duties, library directors also oversee many employees and large facilities, tasks that often require additional skills.
Of course, library directors are not the only ones who need managerial skills. Almost all librarians have some sort of managerial responsibilities, so they, too, need to develop managerial expertise. Today’s librarians face greater challenges than ever before, resulting from increased competition, globalization, ever- changing technology, and the rapid pace of change. As discussed previously, the changes that are occurring as a result of the Fourth Industrial Revolution will continue to buffet libraries with the need to adjust to changes of all sorts. In addition, libraries like almost all other not-for-profit institutions are just beginning to recover from the most challenging economic period they have faced in recent history. Funding of all types— governmental, institutional, and philanthropic—was drastically decreased while demand for library ser vices grew to a record high. Library resources were strained by all the cutbacks and are just now beginning to recover. Libraries will need capable management at all levels to address these new developments in the world of information provision.
What Is Management?
The basic task of management is using organizational resources to achieve defined goals. Within an organization, managers are the people who make decisions that enable the organization to achieve its objectives. Managers then work to help others reach these objectives effectively and efficiently.
Early in the 20th century, Mary Follett characterized management as “the art of getting things done through people.” Follett’s observation remains relevant because, by definition, it is impossible to manage alone. Man agers rely on the skills and labor of others to succeed, so, for them, interpersonal skills are extremely impor tant. Furthermore, all man agers must fulfill the functions of planning, organ izing, staffing, leading, and controlling. Each of these functions will be discussed in more depth later in this chapter.
Who Are Managers?
As stated above, managers are people within an organ ization who are responsible for and support the work of other people. Managers can be categorized in various ways. Commonly they work within a vertical hierarchy. Managers oversee all levels of the organ ization; naturally those nearer the top of the hierarchy have broader responsibilities and authority than do those at lower levels. In typical organizations, including libraries, management can be divided into three levels:
• Top management, which in libraries usually means the director and the assistant and associate directors, is responsible for the overall functioning of the entire organization. In most cases, managers at the highest levels establish organization-wide policy and are influential in setting the leadership style throughout the enterprise.
• Middle managers are in charge of specific subunits or functions of the organ ization. In libraries and information centers, department heads act as middle managers. They are responsible for making sure various parts of the library function successfully. Middle managers, in addition to leading specific subunits or functional teams, also serve as liaisons between top management and supervisors.
• Supervisors, sometimes called first-line managers, are those on the lowest rung of the management hierarchy. Supervisors lead the dayto- day activities of employees working to accomplish orga nizational objectives, and they are responsible for the production of goods or services. In a library, the night circulation manager who works with a group of part-time student workers would be considered a supervisor. First-line managers implement procedures and processes that allow their units to work effectively and efficiently.
The traditional management hierarchy can be seen in figure 1.2 . Note that anyone who is supervising another person is involved in the management process. Many recent graduates from library and information science (LIS) programs become man agers in their first professional positions, although many do not envision themselves in this role when they are LIS students.
As will be discussed later in this book, this traditional managerial hierarchy is being affected by many of the changes in today’s workplace. One widespread change has been the adoption of team-based organizational structures, which has led to a flattening of the management pyramid and the elimination of some middle-management positions. In most of today’s organizations, including libraries, management responsibility is being distributed more widely than ever before.
What Do Managers Do?
Managers are usually very busy people who must carry out many of their duties concurrently. As a result, managers must often multitask, and their work is frequently interrupted. Tasks may be fragmented, with some managerial functions occurring almost daily, and others performed on a more irregular basis. For these reasons, it can be difficult to tease out all the strands that make up the fabric of managerial life. To examine what managers do, the two most common approaches are to consider the functions that managers perform and to describe the roles managers play.
One very common way to view management is as a set of common processes or functions that, when properly carried out, lead to orga nizational efficiency and effectiveness. The managerial functions are those tasks that managers perform as part of their positions. These functions can be classified in various ways,7 but, regardless of the terminology used by various management theorists, it is generally agreed that managers perform five main functions within an enterprise: planning, organ izing, staffing, leading, and controlling. These five functions are depicted in figure 1.3. Anyone who has managerial experience will be familiar with all of them.
Planning requires managers to anticipate tasks that need to be done in order to achieve the organ ization’s goals and to figure out the best methods for accomplishing them. Planning allows managers to determine where their organ ization wants to be in the future and enables that organ ization to make the transition from today to tomorrow.
Organizing is the second function of management. Managers establish the formal structure of authority through which work is divided among the employees. They must first match individuals and their talents with the functions and structures needed to get the job done. After that, they create channels that facilitate communication among the units.
Staffing, often called human resources or personnel, involves hiring, training, compensating, and retaining the people necessary for the organ ization
FIGURE 1.2. Levels of Management in Libraries
to achieve its objectives. No organ ization can be successful without effective employees.
Leading involves creating a shared culture and values within an organization, communicating goals to its employees, and motivating people at all levels. All of the sub-functions encompassed under this category focus on the human element in the organ ization. This human element is very impor tant, because employees’ attitudes, perceptions, and personality attributes affect their work.
Controlling means monitoring an organization’s activities to be sure it is on the right path to meet its goals. Controlling requires analyzing the organization’s operations and then using that information to inform the planning process. In this way, the organization can continually examine and correct its goals in light of current information. Controlling is the mirror image of planning. In planning, man agers establish where the organ ization is headed, whereas in controlling, they assess whether they are on target to reach these goals. Planning allows managers to decide where their organ ization is going; controlling allows them to find out if it has gotten there.
All managers perform these five functions. Of course, managers at different levels and in dif ferent departments will differ in the time they devote
FIGURE 1.3. The Functions of Management
to them and the depth at which they perform them. Like most other management textbooks, Library and Information Center Management is organized around these five major functions, with a section devoted to each.
Practice Your Skills
You are the library director at a state university in a medium size city. A decision has been made to combine your library and the city’s public library in a new building that will provide ser vices for both sets of users. You and your public library counterpart must plan how to merge the collections of the two libraries and manage the ser vices and staff in a shared facil ity.8
You are the director of the information center in a multinational corporation where employees are rarely in their offices. You have just been asked to make plans to transform the library into a virtual library with information available by telephone and Internet9
You are a school librarian just hired by a city planning a new high school. Suddenly you find that you are the administrator of a million- dollar operation and need to be skilled as a facilities planner, designer, technology consultant, and budget authority.10
You work in a public library that is in the midst of changing from one orga nized by using departments to one organized using teams. You have been put on the steering committee that will decide what needs to be done to make a transition between these two types of managing.11
Imagine that you are a manager in a library facing challenging problems such as the real ones described above. How would you go about managing the problem described?
Managerial Roles
Managers must play a number of roles in order to do their jobs well. A role can be defined as an expected set of behav iors and activities. Henry Mintzberg, a Canadian management theorist, observed the activities of a number of managers over a period of time and, from his observations, came up with a set of roles that managers play. Mintzberg grouped these roles into three broad categories: interpersonal roles, information roles, and decisional roles.12 These roles can be seen in figure 1.4
Interpersonal roles, as a category, involve working with people. For example, top man agers often serve as figureheads. Although the term has taken on a slightly pejorative overtone, figureheads are people—like higherlevel man agers—who spend a great deal of time representing their organizations to the outside world. They perform ceremonial functions and entertain on behalf of the organ ization. In such cases, top managers serve as symbols of the organ ization itself.
Managers also play a role as leaders. They perform functions such as motivating, communicating with, and inspiring the people who work for them. Managers often act as liaisons between groups of employees or between employees and customers, linking information sources inside and outside the organ ization. It is often said that managers need to be good networkers; indeed, when they are serving as liaisons they are building essential networks within the organ ization or between the organ ization and the outside world.
Informational roles are more impor tant than ever in today’s information-based organ izations. One role Mintzberg identifies is that of monitor. Monitors are always seeking information, both from outside the
organ ization and from inside. They develop systems to keep track of their units’ per for mance. They oversee the use of resources.
Complementing their information-seeking role, managers also act as disseminators of information. Managers not only gather information, but they also share it with others. This dissemination can take place in person, by e-mail, or via other communication media. As organ izations in general have become more participatory, managers share information much more broadly than in the past.
The final informational role played by a manager is that of spokesperson. As such, a manager may transmit official information about an organ ization to the public by means of e-mails, speeches, newsletters, and the like.
Decisional roles are fundamental to management. The decisions that need to be made may be tactical, financial, or interpersonal. For example, managers often have to act as disturbance handlers. Conflict resolution and crisis response can be among the more challenging aspects of a manager’s job. Similarly, managers often play the role of negotiator. Here they represent their organ ization or department in pursuing resources such as money, equipment, or other forms of support. On occasion, managers may take part in collective bargaining.
In their role as resource allocators, managers spend a great deal of time determining how they will distribute assets such as time, money, and people within the organ ization. There are always decisions that need to be made about allocating resources, especially now when resources are scarce in most organ izations.
Finally, when they work to introduce innovation within the organization, man agers play the role of entrepreneur. Man agers must decide which new ideas are worth bringing into an organ ization and then ensure that the organ ization makes the changes that are necessary to keep it competitive.
Mintzberg’s concept of managerial roles offers an interesting and useful alternative to the traditional view of managerial functions and has been built upon by other researchers in the field of management. Some of the roles Mintzberg describes, such as acting as a figurehead or serving as an official
FIGURE 1.4. Mintzberg’s Managerial Roles
spokesperson, are performed primarily by top-level managers. Yet all managers must play many of these roles in the course of their managerial activities.
Practice Your Skills
Arrange to speak briefly to a middle or lower-level manager in any organ ization with which you are familiar. Ask that manager about his or her daily routine and the amount of time spent on each of the five managerial functions. Then ask the manager about the roles that Mintzberg says managers play. Does that manager play any of the Mintzberg’s roles and what part of the job was being performed when the roles were played?
What Resources Do Managers Use?
According to one definition, a manager is someone with the authority to commit orga nizational resources. Mintzberg noted that one of the managerial roles is that of resource allocator. The resources controlled by managers are of four main types:
Human resources are all the employees who work in an organ ization. Though these employees have varying levels of skill, experience, and education, each serves an essential purpose in the organization. The typical library employs professional librarians, paraprofessionals, clerical workers, technical specialists, and, in many cases, part-time workers such as student assistants and pages. Man agers oversee the distribution of all these human resources.
Financial resources are the sources of an organization’s funding. In the forprofit world, the funding sources are primarily customers, who give the organ ization money in exchange for goods or ser vices. In not-for-profit organizations, funding usually comes from federal, state, or city governments, charitable donations, grants, and similar sources. In both realms, managers are increasingly held accountable for the financial resources of their organ izations. In nonprofits, managers are often expected to secure grants or participate in fund-raising.
Physical resources are the tangible or material assets of an organ ization, ranging from office supplies to office buildings. Libraries rarely own their own premises; instead, the buildings are provided by other entities, such as cities or universities. Nevertheless, a library manager is still responsible for proper management of the building along with every thing inside it. Management of physical resources can be timeconsuming, since in addition to maintenance, it includes acquisition and eventual replacement of the library’s facilities and equipment. In many large libraries, facilities managers are designated, but in cases involving expensive resources, top-level managers will typically make the final decisions. Control of inexpensive items (such as supplies) is usually delegated to lower-level managers.
Information resources are increasingly impor tant in all management settings. Of course, the library’s prime function has always been stewardship of information resources. Behind the scenes, man agers control
