Leadership in Librarianship

Two SURVEYS WERE ADMINISTERED to library professionals holding titular headships in order to develop a list of perceived library leaders. This list was used to learn the locus (subfield) of leadership and the degree of fieldwide integration as evidenced by the extent of shared perceptions by respondents. Results revealed that leaders tend to be associated most strongly with a category labeled “other” whose members may serve as professionals’ professionals; that is, high status field members and directing professional associations. Some fieldwide integration is indicated by agreement on the nomination of two people by a significant portion of respondents from six subfields. Nominators in three subfields frequently concurred in their leader choices creating a de facto community of shared perceptions, and, by implication, shared values which, in turn, may influence the profession’s agenda and priorities. INTRODUCTION Those who lament the “absence” of leadership in librarianship today inaccurately portray the field. Leadership is an integral part of any social system and is, therefore, always present. The absence, however, of a shared perception by members of a group about who its leaders are may indicate the absence of shared aims and goals for that group-in other words, the absence of a common agenda. Leaders draw strength from their ability to articulate common group goals and purposes. A group that does not share these goals and purposes is hard pressed to share its perceptions of who is providmg leadership. Alice Gertzog, 468 Gilmore Street, Meadville, PA 16335 LIBRARY TRENDS, Vol. 40, No. 3, Winter 1992, pp. 402-30 @ 1992 The Board of Trustees, University of Illinois GERTZOG/LEADERSHIP IN LIBRARIANSHIP 403 Identifying leaders is an important undertaking. By identifying those who are perceived as providing leadership, by learning who designates them as leaders, and by assessing the extent of their support, we gain understanding about the social structure in which these leaders operate and about the value system which guides the field at any moment in time. Two important factors that constitute any social system are the nature of its social structure and the nature of its leadership (Rogers & Kincaid, 1981). Little consideration has been given to the relationship between the two, although i t seems clear that they are intimately related. In this study, the structure of leadership in the library field is developed and then used to explore some aspects of its social structure. Two surveys, described later, were administered to generate data that would shed light on the following research questions: 1. Where in the library field do questionnaire respondents perceive leadership to be located? Location, in this context, refers to the library subfield in which perceived leaders are currently working. The first question is designed to address the following collateral questions: Do institutional identifications of leaders indicate that leadership is perceived as residing in one or two subfields of librarianship or is leadership dispersed throughout the library community? To what extent is there a relationship between the subfield identification of nominators and those of nominees? Is there a group of leaders who can be termed field-wide, one which is broad-based, and whose members share recognition from people occupying a number of different subfields of the profession? The implications for agenda-setting of a profession whose leadership can be described as widely dispersed among its subfields would be different than for a profession whose leadership is monolithic or less widely shared. If agendas affect, and are affected by, leadership, then subfields with which leaders are associated may be revelatory of the field’s current agenda. The second research issue concerns what Abbott (1988) terms “connectivity” and poses the following question: 2. To what extent can the library field be considered integrated? Degrees of integration, for these purposes, are operationalized to mean the extent to which perceptions of leadership are shared, with subfields of the profession generally serving as units of analysis. This research question examines survey responses regarding the relationships among subfields of the profession. The following 404 LIBRARY TRENDVWINTER 1992 related questions were also given attention: To what extent is there shared perception between and among occupants of subfields about who is providing leadership? Members of which subfields exhibit the greatest coincidence of nomination? Once a roster of field-wide leaders is developed, are those associated with some subfields more likely than are members of other subfields to nominate people whose names appear on that roster? Broad intersubfield agreement on leader names might describe a well-integrated field. On the other hand, agreement between members of a group of, say, th+e subfields about those defined as field-wide leaders might signal the presence of a subset of the community which shares some 1 values and priorities and other subsets which do not. Further, lack of connectivity may indicate a community in process of differtntiating. DEFINITION, ROLES, ELEMENTS, CONSTRAINTS: SOCIALSTRUCTURE Social structure refers to the patterns generally discernible in social life (Blau, 1975) that are considered relatively enduring or permanent (Homans, 1975). Social structure describes not only the differentiated social positions, roles, or statuses, both formal and informal, in a group (Blau, 1975) but also the structural configurations of social relationships among them (Homans, 1975; Merton, 1975). Other elements of a social structure include structures of socialization (education), economics, politics, kinship, communication, and organization (Barber, 1975). Reference groups, those groups Merton (1949) considered central to an individual’s life, are integral parts of the social structure as well. Although some sociologists reserve ideology, science, religion, values, philosophy, language, and art to the province of “culture,” here culture (ideas) and structure (role and behavior) are treated as one. They seem inextricably bound in a basic premise of the sociology of knowledge that the content of ideas is influenced by social structure and that there is an important relationship between the internal structure of a particular cultural institution and the cultural products developed and accepted within i t (Crane, 1972). The rise of interest in social systems theory, in the sociology of knowledge, in the sociology of science, and in organizational development has led to revived interest in social structures of both scholarly disciplines and formal organizations (see, for example, Mullins, 1973; Crane, 1972). Applied science, in contrast with basic science, is concerned with problems whose solutions are perceived as having practical GERTZOG/LEADERSHIP IN LIBRARIANSHIP 405 applications (Crane, 1972), although professional/applied fields are not dichotomous with scholarly ones. They may be seen more profitably as falling along a continuum. Despite the substantial literature built around the sociology of professions, semi-professions, and occupations, few works describe the social structure of an entire applied field. Methodologically, the task of studying such a field seems less straightforward than it is for a formal organization or a scholarly discipline. Analysis, for instance, of institutional hierarchies, a common practice in discovering the structure of formal organizations, is not as helpful when describing the structure of a profession. Citation analysis has been used successfully to analyze social and leadership structures of scholarly disciplines, but its application to an applied field has some limitations. In an academic field, study of who holds the major elective position in the national association may also be useful in understanding the discipline’s social structure. The presidency is of ten considered “reward” for scholarship. Although this may also be true in some applied fields, Merton found that association headship has sometimes represented “compromise” between prevailing factions, a noncontroversial choice, or even, at times, the absence of an alternative choice. What is known about the social structure of the library world that can be applied to this study? Unfortunately, research into fieldwide structure and/or roles is sparse. Most studies tend to look at formal organizations within the profession-i.e., specific libraries or specific professional organizations, rather than at the profession as a whole. Concern with gender issues-representation, career patterns, and remuneration-has been responsible for much of the field-wide research that has occurred during the past few years. Nevertheless, some common wisdom, along with inferences drawn from the few empirical studies, can be employed to begin to describe the social structure of the field. For instance, librarianship is generally seen as containing four institutional subfields-academic, special, public, and school-all of which operate within the aegis of a parent organization. Some critics argue that this classification scheme is too general and fails to distinguish the real differences within the subfields. Junior or community college libraries, they contend, bear little resemblance to large university research libraries. The same difficulties emerge in considering rural public libraries and large metropolitan ones in the same category. Special libraries often differ not only in size but also in subject matter. The library field may also be thought of as organized into functional groups-technical services or public services, for instance-with such manifest roles as cataloger or reference librarian. 406 LIBRARY TRENDWWINTER 1992 But many of the same difficulties emerge in connection with a functional classification as appear when an institutional approach is employed. Catalogers perform different tasks in research libraries than they do in community colleges; a category labeled manager would include the director of the Boston Public Library as well as the head of the library at the First District School in Meadville, Pennsylvania. For purposes of this study, however, the traditional subfield divisions provide a useful, even if limited, method for describing the field since the distinctions among types of audience, environments, and measures of success are relatively sharper. It is generally held that a hierarchy, a “caste” system according to Pauline Wilson (1983), exists that results in academic and special librarians being thought to hold higher status than public and school librarians. Abbott (1988), too, considers academic and special librarians to be of higher status and to be at the ccre of the library world. Empirical studies of monetary reward structures have tended to validate these claims. DEFINITION, CONSTRAINTS: ROLE, ELEMENTS, LEADERSHIP Leadership is a universal human phenomenon (Bass, 1990). All social structures have leaders (Havelock, 1975). Leadership refers to how people in groups organize themselves (Kellerman, 1984) and interact (Bass, 1990). Leaders are agents of change-i.e., persons whose acts affect other people more than other people’s acts affect them (Stogdill, 1981). Leaders are involved in helping to crystallize what followers need, which of those needs should be addressed, and what methods should be used to adduce solutions (Burns, 1978). Leaders, therefore, may be said to articulate and shape the agenda. Definitionally, the term Eeadership may be even more ambiguous than that of its parent, social structure. Cecil Gibb (1968), writing in the Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, makes this explicit with his contention that “the concept of leadership, like that of general intelligence, has largely lost its value for the social sciences ...so diverse are [these] ways [of leading] that any one concept attempting to encompass them all, as leadership does, loses the specificity and precision necessary to scientific thinking” (Gibb, 1968, p. 91). As far back as 1935, Pigors (in Gibb, 1968) distinguished between “headship” and “leadership.” The prime difference he identified between the two is a function of the source of power to influence. In formal organizations with appointed heads, the authority has its source outside the group. Subordinates accept the head’s influence on “pain of punishment derived from the larger organization.” In GERTZOG/LEADERSHIP IN LIBRARIANSHIP 407 a voluntary group or association, the source of the authority is the group itself. The leader’s authority is willingly accorded by fellow group members, the followers. Followership rests on the promise of positive satisfactions to be gained from shared goals. This is not to say that headship and leadership are mutually exclusive, only to maintain that they are not mutually coincident, as much of the current leadership and management literature about leadership seems to suggest. In this article, nonformally vested perceptual leadership will be termed emergent to differentiate it from headship and titular leadership. Definitions of leadership emerging from different conceptual categories will produce, in any given field, different leader name lists. For instance, if we see leadership as the contribution of a specific idea or technology, the names that emerge are likely to be the Edisons, Bells, and Fords. On the other hand, if we talk about action and/ or persuasion, the names may be Roosevelts, Wilsons, and Hearsts. Even within groups where operational definitions of the term leadership have been agreed upon, the question of who is providing leadership may be observer dependent and a product of selective perception, cognitive dissonance, and other psychological factors. On the other hand, who a society names as its leaders gives a strong indication of that society’s values at that moment in time. A society which selects actors and sports heroes as its leaders reflects values or priorities different from a community which elevates philosophers and poets to leadership positions. One common basis for designating a person a leader is expertise. Perceived expertise influences how people think and behave. They defer to expert opinions even to the point of contradicting their own judgments or values (Milgrim, 1974). Patrick Wilson (1983) uses the concept of cognitive authority to describe how humans depend on second-hand knowledge to guide them in their understanding of the world. “Experience teaches,” he says, “but not much. Most of us go through life occupying a narrow range of social locations. If all we could know of the world was what we could find out on the basis of first-hand experience, we would know little” (p. 9). So we use other’s knowledge, the knowledge of authorities. How do people determine cognitive authorities? Present reputation is the strongest practical test, particularly reputation among those we believe to have cognitive authority in the appropriate sphere. “Opinion leadership,” long considered a key to the diffusion of innovation, is a product of perceived expertise (cognitive authority) and reputational leadership. According to Rogers’s (1983) opinion, 408 LIBRARY TRENDWWINTER 1992 leaders are more exposed to external communication. They are more “cosmopolite.” They have higher social status, and they are more innovative. The distinction between cosmopolitan influentials and local influentials has been explored by Merton (1975a) in his study of communities. He labeled “cosmopolitans” as those whose orientation is to the wider world rather than to an immediate or proximate reference group. The terms local and cosmopolitan are used in this research to describe spheres in which perceived leaders are seen to exert their influence. “Cosmopolitans” are those who have been identified as leaders by several subfields of the profession, field-wide leaders. “Locals” are those whose influence seems to be more narrowly exerted and extends to only one or two subfields. The designations include no judgment about the quality of leadership but only about their domains. The study of leadership in the social sciences has led to a major debate in both sociology and political science which centers on the character of the leadership structure within communities. Its participants argue about whether there is a power elite-that is, a monopolistic and monolithic group which has a generalized ability to influence most affairs-or whether community power is situational to the decision at hand and is therefore factional, coalitional, and, to some degree, amorphous. The debate is both theoretical and empirical, and how one stands on it determines to a large extent the investigative methods one employs. Those who subscribe to the “elite” position generally use a reputational method to identify power holders. On the other hand, those who adhere to the pluralistic position are more prone to study specific cases and analyze collective decisions retrospectively (see for instance, Dahl, 1961, and Hunter, 1953, as representative of the two postures). One version of the reputational approach to the study of leadership was used by Kadushin (1974) in his investigation of American intellectual elites. As in science and the professions, he said that only colleagues can evaluate the qualifications of their peers. Thus, the operational definition of an elite intellectual becomes for Kadushin “a person whom other elite intellectuals believe to be an elite intellectual” (p. 7). Kadushin found that an intellectual was defined as “one who is expert in dealing with high-quality general ideas on questions of values and esthetics and who communicates his judgments on these matters to a fairly general audience” (Kadushin, 1974, p. 7). Similarly, in this study, leaders in the library field are those who other library leaders believe to be leaders. Are those who are perceived as leaders really leaders? For purposes of this investigation, perceived leaders are, in fact, leaders. Because GERTZOG/LEADERSHIP IN LIBRARIANSHIP 409 they have been identified as leaders, they fit, definitionally, into someone’s understanding of a leader and therefore function as one. Perception, in this case, creates reality. The degree to which there is shared meaning among members of a group is a product of how similar their individual patterns of interaction have become. Smircich and Morgan (1982) contend that if a group situation embodies strongly held competing definitions of reality, no clear pattern of leadership evolves. There is little research about “emergent” leadership as it relates to the library community as a whole, although there has been a spurt of interest and activity about leadership in recent years. Those research efforts which treat the concept travel two distinct paths: one group of studies defines leadership as management of administration, always within the context of headship of a specific organization. The other views leadership from a historical and or biographical perspective, and in terms of the provision of one or many specific contributions to the profession, in personal characteristics, or in qualitative analysis of how some titular leaders view leadership. Neither path seems to point toward leadership as an element of social structure of the library field, although they incorporate the notion of change and of leadership requirements (see, for instance Euster, 1987; Woodsworth & Von Wahle, 1988; Riggs, 1988; Sheldon, 1991). THEMETHODOLOGY STUDY FOR THI A serial nomination process was used to generate a list of perceived library leaders and to determine reasons for their selection. Two questionnaire instruments were distributed, one based on the other, with the results of the first used to construct the second. Both surveys requested respondents to name up to fifteen people they perceived to be providing leadership to the American library field today. The first survey questionnaire was open ended with blank spaces for nominations. Respondents were required to recall the names of those who they believed were leaders. The second questionnaire included a list of the 101 names mentioned most frequently in response to the first survey. Respondents could choose from among them or supply additional names. Questionnaires were color coded to indicate the subfield of the profession with which respondents were associated. One of two survey questionnaires was randomly distributed to a 1,208 member survey group. The survey universe used traditional library institutional subfields and included: 1. directors of large public libraries-those with budgets of over $1 million; 410 LIBRARY TRENDS/WINTER 1992 2. heads of special libraries with at least six professional librarians on staff; 3. directors of academic libraries which contain more than a halfmillion books; 4. full-time library educators with the rank of associate or full professor; 5. a stratified, nonrandom sample of school librarians. The process of selecting school/media librarians for the survey proved to be a formidable task. The intention had been to draw up a list of school/media librarians who were responsible for the largest number of libraries within districts. It was assumed that a threshold figure separating them from other libraries in the category would become manifest. However, none appeared after a time-consuming search. The absence of a group of school librarians similar in character to those in other subfields constituted a major stumbling block to the research. Should school librarians be eliminated from the study or should a list be constructed which, though flawed, would nevertheless represent some portion of that subfield? The latter course was chosen. The list for school librarians is not a universe. It is a sample and not a random scientifically constructed one whose limitations should be considered as the findings are presented (the specific methods used to draw the sample of school librarians appear in Gertzog, 1988). 6. A category labeled “other.” After compiling the survey universe by subfields, a group of important library institutions remained for whom no category seemed appropriate. They included, among others, state libraries, publishers, associations, journals, and two libraries-The New York Public Library and the Library of Congress-which seemed to defy categorization in any single subfield. Governance, scope, and funding distinguish them from other institutions. They are the two largest libraries in the United States. Both are comprehensive in their approach to collection development. The New York Public Library straddles both the public and research fields in its funding, scope, and audience. The Library of Congress, while governmentally funded, is a special library for members of Congress as well as a research institution. In order to avoid both the Procrustean task of trying to fit them into a well-defined subfield and the controversies which might ensue from such placement, they have been labeled as “other.” Yet another important question about the “other” category related to its treatment as a subfield. This study explores the behavior of members of subfields acting in the aggregate rather than as individuals. For instance, the subfields represented by nominators GERTZOGILEADERSHIP IN LIBRARIANSHIP 411 and nominees are cross tabulated in order to examine relationships among them. Members of the “other” category are not tied together by commonality in clientele, governance, or funding source to the degree that members of the other five subfields seem to be. Yet it can be argued that “others” reside structurally in the same place within the library profession-that is, roughly between the fields of practice and the world of research (Havelock, 1975).Further, most members of this category function as boundary spanners inasmuch as the institutions with which they are associated are not concerned with a single subfield of the profession, but with several, if not all. Finally, most members placed in the “other” category do not mediate with the library client world but rather work in purely professional environments. For these reasons, “other” is considered to have some legitimacy as a subfield and is therefore accorded treatment similar to that given to the remaining subfields. A large survey group was used in order to elicit as many names as possible and to allow for analysis by subfields. The large number of potential respondents, coupled with a need to protect anonymity, suggested the use of a mail survey. The decisions to limit the survey to American library leaders and to place it in the present time period were made in order to produce less ambiguous, more uniform data. In addition, the data thus generated would represent a benchmark and could serve as a basis for comparison with future similar studies. The decision to use two types of instruments was made to take advantage of factors that seem to accompany each and that would enhance the usability of the findings. The first questionnaire, which asked that respondents supply names, represented an attempt to generate as spontaneous a list of names as possible and to negate the bandwagon or “Matthew Effect” in which rewards accrue on the basis of name recognition rather than current contribution. The second survey was designed to provide a structure, that is, a set of names from which to choose, in order to try to replace the limitations and difficulties of the recall process with the ease of one which involved recognition. This second approach might help to minimize the noise generated by momentary impressions and political considerations. The most important criterion for inclusion in the universe of librarians destined to receive the survey was “bigness.” Size, measured in dollars, volumes, staff, rank, or number of libraries for which a unit accepts responsibility, seems to be the basis on which financial benefits and prestige are conferred within the profession. Using size seemed to permit uniformity and ease of decision. Other reasons for seeking the views of this group rather than those of a random sample of the entire profession were based on the following assumptions: 412 LIBRARY TRENDWWINTER 1992 1. Librarians in higher positions are more apt to be involved in “boundary-spanning” activities and to be “cosmopolitans.” 2. They bear heavy financial, personnel, policy, and programmatic responsibilities and are the persons most directly and immediately affected by leadership in the field. Members of this group are likely to be among the most knowledgeable about patterns of professional influence in the field. 3. Most librarians, like workers in other professions, devote only a fraction of energy to matters of diagnosis, planning, innovation, deliberate change, and growth. Day-to-day considerations demand that the major proportion of available effort be spent in carrying out routine goal-directed operations and maintaining existing relationships within the system (Miles in Havelock, 1969). The likelihood, then, of most library personnel being familiar with field-wide professional leaders, even reputationally, is small. 4. The library world is probably marked by a center-periphery structure which resembles those identified for other fields where most members are “outsiders” or, at best, marginally connected. Those in charge of the “biggest” institutions are most likely to be at the “center” of the field rather than on its periphery. 5 . T h e exchange of ideas most frequently occurs between “tranceivers” who are “homophilous,” that is, similar or linked in certain social characteristics (Rogers & Kincaid, 1981). 6. This group of titular leaders probably includes colleagues and peers of those who will be nominated as leaders and, as such, is the group which Kadushin (1974) asserts is best able to evaluate their qualifications. METHODOLOGICAL LIMITS The nomination process has some drawbacks. A large population is needed to isolate a small number of opinion leaders. Anybody can appear on the list. Ray Bradbury, for instance, was nominated by a California librarian; important colleagues can be overlooked; and local variations produced, for example, by geographic isolation, may influence the choices. Drawbacks to constructing the list from a population should be mentioned as well. The library field is diverse. Six subfields cannot adequately describe all its parts. The relative homogeneity of the survey group caused by adherence to the criterion of “bigness” and that of titular headship may have been responsible for some of the results. It is conceivable that members of this group are more likely to be involved in the field’s professional associations-in particular, the American Library Association-and, therefore, perceive leadership as emerging from that sector of the population. In addition, GERTZOG/LEADERSHIP IN LIBRARIANSHIP 413 this group on average is older than the profession’s membership as a whole and therefore more likely to nominate older individuals than might be named by a cross-section of the field. And finally, this group may associate leadership with established structural and cultural considerations and positions and find leaders among their ranks, thereby screening out potentially restructuring ideas and leaders. DETERMINING FOR ANALYSIS GROUPS Frequency of mention governs much of the study’s analysis. Leaders are identified as such because they receive the most nominations or are selected the greatest number of times. Responses about perceived leaders were analyzed to produce leader lists formed by aggregate frequency of mention and frequency of mention across subfields. Frequency of mention is the basis, too, for the composition of several subcategories of leaders used in the study. Some analyses include all nominees and all nominators. Others utilize the group of 101leaders who received four or more nominations on the first survey and whose names appear on the second survey instrument. The cut-off point at four or more nominations is arbitrary. It does represent, however, more than two-thirds (70 percent) of the nominations and does not include those mentioned infrequently or only once. A cut-off point of five nominations would have produced a list with twenty-two fewer names, and one which required three or more nominations would have included thirty-three additional people. Another set of analyses utilizes the groups of sixteen most frequently named leaders produced by each survey. A group size of sixteen was dictated by the sharp difference in the number of nominations separating the sixteenth and seventeenth names on the first survey list. A similar, although less precipitous, hiatus appeared between the sixteenth and seventeenth nominations in the second survey. A final group of leaders emerging from the study, and perhaps the most crucial one, includes those persons who have been designated as “field-wide” leaders-i.e., the “cosmopolitans.” These are the leaders whose nominations are used to assess the degree of integration exhibited by the field. Establishing this group required decision rules about the pool from which field-wide leaders would be selected, and the necessary level of field-wide support. Two related considerations are involved in the determination of field-wide support. One is the percentage of a subfield naming a nominee, and the other is the number of subfields achieving that percentage. The second consideration was more easily resolved. To claim field-wide leadership, nominated 414 LIBRARY TRENDUWINTER 1992 leaders must be recognized as such by members of at least half of the subfield. The first consideration, the level of support within a subfield, was decided arbitrarily and for pragmatic reasons. Using as a source the sixteen most frequently named leaders in each survey, two sets of rules for determining field-wide leadership were adopted. Indviduals are termed field-wide leaders for the first survey i f they have been so named by 10 percent of the respondents from three subfields. They are classed as field-wide in the second survey if they have received 20 percent of the selections of three subfields. Higher numbers of responses and a more limited choice of leaders accounted for a greater percentage of agreement on leader names in the second survey. Consequently, the threshold has been set at a higher point--20 percent rather than 10 percent. These 10 and 20 percent thresholds, combined with the three subfield requirements, produce a group large enough to investigate patterns of behavior.