Leadership Reflections: Organizational Culture

Abstract

Organizations function as small societies with their unique behaviors, patterns, and communication. Organizational culture describes how individuals work within libraries and the patterns, assumptions, values, attitudes, and behavior that help an organization to operate within its environment and achieve, or not achieve, its mission. Effective leaders must understand the operational framework of their libraries in order to be successful in managing or to change the culture in support of strategic goals. Changing the culture of an organization is difficult and a long-term process with a realistic understanding of the current behaviors and a determined vision for how an organization should work. There are some specific strategies that may aid leaders in transforming a library culture into a productive and effective set of behaviors that will contribute to a library’s success.

Keywords:

• management
• culture
• change management
• behaviors

Note

Notes

1 For more information on the Competing Values Framework, check out https://www.ocai-online.com/.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Maggie Farrell

Column Editor’s Note. Leadership skills are essential to creating libraries that are effective and relevant in their communities. While some individuals seem to possess inherent leadership capabilities, it is possible to develop and strengthen skills to effectively lead a department, unit, or organization. This column explores ways for librarians and library workers to improve their knowledge and abilities as they lead their units, libraries, communities, and the library profession. Interested authors are invited to submit articles for this column to the editor at [email protected].