1993: Critical Issues in Library Management: Organizing for Leadership and Decision-Making

Allerton Park Institute Proceedings (no. 35, 1993); Edited by Bryce L. Allen and Terry L. Weech.

The library that lacks leadership lacks the vision necessary to transform itself. Without leadership, it is likely to subside into "business as usual" that becomes increasing irrelevant as the world changes around it. The library that lacks decision-making cannot deal with any of the important day-to-day decisions that define the character of the library.

So both are needed. Yet, somehow, leadership and decision-making seem to require different approaches. Many librarians have been convinced of the value of participative decision-making, but are they equally convinced of the value of participative leadership? Does that idea even make sense? On the other hand, a strong leader with a vision for the future of the library may be reluctant to have the implementation of that vision bogged down in the endless committee meetings that seem the hallmark of participative decision-making.

This, then, is the conundrum addressed by the papers which were presented at the Thirty-Fifth Allerton Park Conference (October 24-26, 1993) sponsored by the Graduate School of Library and Information Science of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: how can libraries successfully combine leadership and decision-making in their organizations?

The complete text of the Institute is available here as well as the individual papers. The papers included here are:

• Learning about Leadership: What Works in Modern Organizations - Barbara B. Moran
• The Leader as Decision-Maker: When Centralized Decisions Become Imperative - Herbert S. White
• Staff as Decision-Makers: The Merits of Decentralized Decision-Making - Maurice R Marchant
• Making Human Resource Decisions - Richard E. Rubin
• The Role of Leadership in Planning: A Frank and Candid Anaysis of the Realities of Planning in the Public Sector - Nancy Bolt
• Remembrances of Things Past - Tom Eadie

This volume was published as number 198/199 in the Occasional Paper series of the Graduate School of Library and Information Science of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.