Hierarchical Structure Of Academic Library

Academic libraries are part of colleges or universities, and thus many of the organizational components of them are based on organizational aspects of higher education institutions. Academic libraries tend to be the most formal library organizations among the traditional library types. Traditionally these types of libraries were departmentalized and tended to be structured, even though individual departments have been fairly flat. In the past year there were at least two types or levels of leadership in academic libraries which are library administration and departmental managers. The departmental managers were usually librarians with enough experience who were good with developing and managing the policies within their department. Universities

This style of management is appropriate when change is steady. However, many reasons and factors are and have dramatically given impact to this status quo and stability. Among these factors are new budgetary constraints and competition, increasing diversity of employees, demands for measurable service outcomes, greater span of controls and rapid technological changes. As a result, academic library employees and leaders are looking for new organizational cultures and models that encourage flexibility, discretion and empowerment in order to keep up with uncertain times. As Edwards (1997) argues, managers and directors of academic libraries feel forced in the typical hierarchical structure of higher education. These structures of management do not allow them to change their library’s services quickly enough to account for the rapid shifts and changes in information technologies. This lead the traditional hierarchical values become dysfunctional and should replace by more adhocracy or clan

The adhocracy framework would encourage more on entrepreneurship and risk taking. Library managers could empower some teams to keep the “utility” of the library running. When adhocracy framework combined with the clan framework, the resulting workplace would be more energetic and dynamic. It also will be able to respond to rapid shift, but by using teams to decide the changes, the variety offered through a work group would be used in offering new services. The clan-based framework on the other hand would encourage smaller teams to create around certain tasks. Clan framework would encourage groups of individuals to be appointed to teams based around types of information services or sources. Then, if there is alter or change in a particular technology, the team can alter more quickly than if changes have to work their way through hierarchical management