Achieving Transformational Change in Academic Libraries

By Stephen Mossop

Academic libraries undergo episodes of strategic change. Transformational change may be seen as fundamentally different from other kinds of change. A part of this process is often deep level cultural change. At the individual level this may be traumatic, but at the strategic level, such change can prove essential.Achieving Transformational Change in Academic Libraries explores the purpose and nature of ‘Transformational Change’ and its exponents, and discusses the benefits and limitations of its place in an academic library setting. The title is divided into five chapters, covering: a definition of transformational change; drivers of transformational change and its place in a strategic change agenda; selling the vision of cultural change; human resource issues and cultural change; and the nature of change as a constant.

• Provides innovative interdisciplinary research
• Offers context-free, practical examples of the role of transformational leadership in achieving cultural change and strategic organisational development
• Explores the sometimes ambiguous relationship between transformational and transactional leadership

• Language: English
• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Release date: Jan 29, 2013
• ISBN: 9781780633909

Stephen Mossop

Stephen Mossop is Head of Library Services at the University of Exeter, UK. He has published and presented widely on aspects of Strategic Organisational Development and Library Management, and has special interests in library design, RFID and customer relationship management. He is best known for his 2008 case study on RFID at the University of Central Lancashire (for the BIC e4libraries project).

Book preview

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Introduction

I heard a joke once about an elderly street cleaner whose new manager called him in for a ‘getting-to-know-you’ chat. Asked why he enjoyed his job, the cleaner smiled and said, ‘Because it never changes. I like coming to work every morning, knowing that I’ll be brushing the same streets as I brushed yesterday, pushing the same barrow and using the same brush and shovel I was given on my very first day. My tools and I have sort of grown up together, and they’re as good as new.’ His manager was filled with wonder, and asked, ‘How on earth have you managed to keep your equipment in such good order after so many years? I’d have thought your brush would have worn out by now!’ The street cleaner, glad to have impressed his new boss, said, ‘Oh that’s easy – I get a new head every spring, and a new handle every autumn!’

‘Change’ is a relative term. It means different things to different people. Some will seek it out, while others will avoid it like the plague; some will welcome it, while others will resist it as hard as they can; some will initiate it, while others, like the street cleaner in the joke, will scarcely realise it’s happening. Like most people, I’ve been involved in change my whole life, in one form or another: moving houses; changing schools; changing jobs; getting married; having children and grandchildren; losing parents … the list Achieving Transformational Change in Academic Libraries is endless. While some are more welcome than others, of course, such changes are natural – just part of life and part of living. Isn’t it strange, then, that work-related change seems to provoke so many heightened passions, so many emotive responses, and, given the number of books and articles on the subject, so much academic thought and practical advice? It is only ‘work’, after all! So, why does it provoke such responses? Because ‘ work’ is a very personal thing. What ‘work’ means to individuals can be as diverse as the individuals themselves: for some, it is a strong part of ‘who they are’; for others it is simply ‘what they do’. It can provide their reason for getting up in the morning, or it can be just a way of putting bread on the table at night. For most, it’s probably a bit of both. It follows, then, that ‘change’ will mean different things to different people, and that their response to it will be dictated largely by their individual attitudes and needs. Will the change threaten their sense of ownership over what they do, and how they feel about their role? Will it threaten their ability to feed their family? There are varying degrees of change, of course, and varying degrees of ‘threat’ to individuals and benefit to organisations.

All academic libraries undergo episodes of strategic change, reflecting the constant need to adjust direction and momentum to best meet the needs of those they serve. Often, this has more to do with ‘realignment’ and ‘refocusing’ than ‘redirection’, although of course it can involve elements of all three. Transformational change is something fundamentally different, something very much more radical. It has its roots in the need to realign and refocus an organisation in the face of external influences, but it goes much deeper to remodel the fixed and limiting internal mindsets that influence its openness to wider strategic change and its ability to continuously adapt and improve. Often involving deep-seated cultural change, the results can be dramatic and disturbing at an individual level – but removing inherent logjams can prove vitally beneficial at a strategic level. On a scale between ‘intervention’ and ‘cure’, if approached in the right way, this is definitely ‘cure’.

Drawing on experiences at the University of Exeter and elsewhere, this book explores the nature of transformational change and its effects, and discusses the benefits and limitations of its place in an academic library setting.

Part 1

Transformational Change: Planning, Processes and People

1

So what is ‘transformational change’?

Abstract:

This chapter explores the nature of transformational change in the context of organisational culture, and its relationship with and difference to other change management styles; and considers the motivation, skills and behaviours of those who would act as change agents to bring about organisational transformation.

Key words

transformation

transformational leadership

organisational culture

organisational change

change management

charismatic leadership

strategic leadership

strategic vision

Defining transformational change

Language is a powerful medium, and its meaning is in constant flux. In common with many such terms, ‘transformation’, ‘paradigm’ and others have been diluted by overuse, since their adoption for use in management circles, to the point where they are in danger of losing their strength and usefulness, in the context of strategic change, as descriptors of fundamental shifts in understanding and dramatic movements in organisational behaviour and direction. As Tosey and Robinson (2002) demonstrate, these once grand concepts are commonly paraded by management consultants and business advisors as their stock in trade, often being ‘posed as an imperative, a necessity for survival and the only alternative to corporate oblivion’ (p. 100), to the extent that they have become the necessary language and claim for almost any change programme. Little wonder, then, that when confronted with such terms an unprepared, world-weary and probably unwilling staff might regard them as just so much ‘management-speak’, and so of little interest or consequence in their experience and circumstances, and regard those who propound them with caution and wariness – as unwelcome troublemakers intent on bringing the misery of change in their wake in their vain attempts to force theory into practice. Surely, in their eyes, such characters are to be distrusted, and the theories they expound treated with contempt and indifference, if not with outright resistance?

Not terms to be trifled with, then, and like any form of language they need to be used with some care when initiating change if the desired end results are not to be scuppered at the outset by a negative reaction instigated simply by the careless use of such inflammatory terminology.

My definition, somewhat cautiously arrived at, given the background described above, would be that while ‘transformational change’ may well be envisioned from the outset, and will guide and form the central pillar of a full change programme, it is just as often only truly recognised in hindsight, at a moment in time when the current state can be clearly compared to the former state – and recognised as being profoundly different. In reality, there may well be no individual intervention, no single moment in time, that one could point at as having been the point of transformation. It is often, therefore, a hidden goal, recognised only in its