Leadership development of academic librarians : an exploratory study

Abstract

In a university, the library is a core unit supporting teaching, learning and research of students and staff. Its effectiveness to a large extent depends on the leadership quality of professional librarians working at all levels in the organizational hierarchy of the library. Developing librarians’ leadership capacity is an important issue to libraries, and to higher education as a whole. Understanding librarians’ leadership development can help libraries cultivate competent leaders; resulting in effective, efficient and adaptive libraries supporting higher education institutions. Although research on leadership development abounds in general, very little about how academic librarians develop leadership capacity has been reported in the literature. Specifically, there is no study on this topic in Hong Kong. This qualitative study attempts to build a better understanding of this important yet understudied topic. It explores leadership development of librarians through the perception and experiences of practicing librarians. It collected data from librarians in five publicly funded universities in Hong Kong, using an anonymous survey, followed by one-on-one interviews with 22 librarians. Three research questions explore three aspects of leadership development: what leadership capacity is as perceived by academic librarians; what activities develop leadership capacity; and, what factors affect leadership development effectiveness. The findings describe librarians’ leadership capacity as a construct with three components: competencies, personal attributes and actions to perform four leadership roles: Navigator, Experimenter, People Developer, and Relations Builder. The study depicts librarians’ leadership development as a long-term process containing developmental opportunities of four broad types: training programmes, work experiences, social relations and self-learning. Work experiences and social relations are the powerful types in developing leadership capacity; the other two broad types are important supplements in librarians’ development journey. The study explores factors that affect leadership development effectiveness in three aspects: developmental features of activities, personal learning attributes and organizational context. The analysis suggests that organizational context influences the other two aspects through enhancing mechanisms that generates development opportunities, and facilitating motivation of librarians to engage in leadership development. With the findings, the study proposes three points of insights into leadership development: 1) leadership development as daily work life experiences; 2) libraries’ leadership development systems and strategies; 3) librarians’ responsibilities to set and achieve development goals. The study further summarizes the challenges in the participating libraries. The findings enrich the understanding of leadership capacity and developmental activities in librarianship, and contributes to the literature by clarifying the relationship between factors underpinning leadership development in academic libraries. It informs librarians on how to build their leadership capacity, and helps library administrators to assess their organization strategies in talent management and succession planning.