Table 3.1

Topics of the expert interviews

*Academic libraries are defined in this research project as university libraries, national libraries as well as research libraries.

3.1.1 Which countries do the participants come from?

Figure 3.1 shows from which countries the leaders and change managers came who participated in this research project (including the case study described in section 10.2). As can be seen, the majority came from Germany, but other backgrounds were included to see if there were major cultural differences in the handling of deliberate large-scale changes. Thus leaders from the USA, Greece, the United Kingdom and Finland also participated in this research project.

More detailed information can be found in Table 3.2 which lists leaders and change mangers according to type of library as well as the country they came from.

As can be seen in the following chapters, there are no great differences in the handling of major changes in these countries. Each change project had its own special aspects that needed to be considered which led to variances in approach taken by the respective leader, but these were not based on cultural differences.

3.1.2 Are the participants male or female leaders and change managers?

A further aspect of interest was whether it made a difference if the leader was a woman or a man. In Table 3.3 it can be seen that the leaders of the participating academic libraries were relatively uniformly distributed between male and female. From public libraries more male leaders participated in this research project. All the change managers were female.

All in all no major differences between female and male leaders could be found in the handling of deliberate large- scale changes. The only differences that could be found were where male leaders described their leadership styles as more authoritarian (see sections 4.2.2 and 5.4). This is not to say that male leaders usually tend to be more authoritarian than female leaders. For example, in another (small) research project about leadership styles in academic libraries, a female leader said in an expert interview that she tends to lead – being new at her management position – more often using an authoritarian than a cooperative leadership style as her general method (Berke, 2012).

Both leaders with an authoritarian leadership style had some problems with missing competences and authority they thought should have been given to them by their superiors or the directors of their institutions/libraries. As no one else in this research project mentioned this kind of problem, it could perhaps be an explanation for a more authoritarian leadership style – which would make another interesting research project in its own right.

3.1.3 How much time did the participants have to conduct their change projects?

What became clear throughout this research process was that most of the libraries that had to cope with a deliberate large-scale change did not have a lot of time to fulfil the new requirements of their libraries.

The time allocated for these deliberate major large-scale change projects ranged from four months up to five years, although most needed to be finished within a year. The average duration of these nine change projects in libraries was about 7.8 months. In Figure 3.2 the duration of each change project analysed can be seen. Two of the major change projects in libraries are still ongoing and one has a second stage still to be finished, calculated to require three more months to make a total of 7.5 months for this major change (see Figure 3.2 – ‘Reduction of space II’ and ‘Reduction of space II including construction works’).

In one library the leader has had to handle three major changes over a 13-year period (see section 5.4), taking two years, eight months (with a parallel integration process lasting six years) and five years respectively.

The library in which change has become day-to-day business has been handling deliberate large-scale changes for 12 years to date.

 What kind of change took place in your...