COMPLETE SCHOOL PROJECT TOPICS & MATERIALS :
CHAPTERS: Chapter 1-5
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ABSTRACT
Job effectiveness of academic librarians in today’s information age is important as they are expected to be the vanguard of acquiring, processing, storing and disseminating information to users. It is of utmost importance for academic librarians to provide quality information to support teaching, learning, research and community service. However, the general opinion among professional members and studies revealed low level of job effectiveness of librarians which could be due to certain factors in their work environment like leadership style and organizational culture. The study investigated the extent to which leadership style and organizational culture influenced job effectiveness of librarians in universities in South-West, Nigeria.
The study adopted the survey research design. Population of study consisted of 373 librarians from 35 university libraries in South-West, Nigeria. Total enumeration was used. A validated questionnaire was used as the instrument for data collection. The Cronbach’s alpha reliability coefficients for each of the variables ranged from 0.96 to 0.98. Response rate was 80.96%. Data analysis was done using correlation and multiple regression.
The findings showed that Leadership style in terms of transformational, transactional and laissez-faire had a significant positive relationship with job effectiveness (r = .704, p < .05). Organizational culture in terms of involvement, mission, consistency and adaptability had a significant positive relationship with job effectiveness (r = .771, p < .05). Leadership style and organizational culture had a positive and significant combined influence on job effectiveness of librarians in universities in South-West, Nigeria (Adj. R2 = .628, F (2,299) = 254.761, p < .05).
The study concluded that a substantial relationship existed between leadership style and job effectiveness. There was also a substantial relationship between organizational culture and job effectiveness. The study recommended that university librarians should use a leadership style that encourages effective performance from academic librarians at any given time. University management and university librarians should always provide enabling corporate environment that encourages job effectiveness. University librarians should provide enabling environment that would encourage adaptability in organizational culture.
Keywords: Leadership style, Organizational culture, Job effectiveness, Academic librarians,
South –West, Nigeria.
Word Count: 328
INTRODUCTION
Job effectiveness has to do with performing a task to the extent of producing the intended result or doing a duty successfully. The level of effectiveness of the members of staff of an organization could make or mar the performance of such organization and it could go a long way to determine the degree to which objectives are achieved and the extent to which problems are solved. Job effectiveness is important to every worker including academic librarians as it gives satisfaction, shows self-efficacy and mastery of the job which leads to promotion, awards and honour being bestowed on the effective individual (Sonnentag, Volmer and Spychala, 2010). The job effectiveness of every worker in a unit of an organization add up to become unit effectiveness which can culminate in group or organizational effectiveness to the organization if all or most of its staff are consistently effective on the job.
Many factors help in determining job effectiveness, these are: the knowledge of a worker in relation to the task at hand, intelligence, exposure among other ones. Markos and Sridevi (2010) said it starts from good recruitment and orientation processes and it includes opportunity for career advancement; provision of all necessary resources needed to do a good job; training, good communication and feedback system; incentives; showing interest on the performing employees; a well spelt-out corporate culture and the attitude of the leadership. There are various factors that could negatively impact on job effectiveness these factors include faulty recruitment exercise; lack of appropriate qualification; lack of technical know-how; lack of relevant and current information that could help on the job; poor work environment; poor attitude to work; inadequate tools for working. Other factors that could hinder job effectiveness include hostility in work physical environment; poor remuneration and welfare package and other motivational factors; inappropriate leadership style and organizational culture all of which could lead to poor provision of goods and services; poor service provider and customer relationship; poor organizational and national image.
Job effectiveness which simply has to do with doing the right thing on the job in order to get the expected result is applicable to every profession including librarianship. The job effectiveness of librarians is important in the sense that it instills confidence in the effective librarians; leads to recognition, promotion and honour; helps the marketability of the effective librarian; encourages high quality service delivery; helps to foster good relationship between librarians and library users; boosts the image of the library and the parent institution and help in realizing the overall mission and objective of an academic library and that of its parent institution.
Researchers have divergent opinions on job effectiveness of librarians in Nigeria; some of them like Yaya, Opeke and Onuoha (2016) in their study on job satisfaction and productivity of librarians in public universities in Nigeria observed that the productivity of librarians in public universities in Nigeria was high. Ogunlana, Oshinaike and Ibrahim (2016) agreed with Yahaya, Opeke and Onuoha (2016) in their study of commitment of library and information professionals in Nigeria. Ekere, Omekwu and Nwoha (2016) also reported that users were satisfied with the resources of the MTN digital library in University of Nigeria, Nsukka. However studies like Emasealu and Umeozor (2015) reported poor performance of librarians in Nigeria in the area of community service programmes. Fashola (2015) observed poor state of libraries, obsolete collections that did not encourage patronage from library users in Oyo State Secondary Schools. In line with Fashola (2015), Idoko, Ugwu and Aba (2015) discovered inadequate and outdated collections and low level of implementation of user’s programme in 12 unity schools across Nigeria. The study of Ilo, Idiegbeyan-ose and Adebayo (2015) carried out among librarians in Ogun State revealed that theses and projects were not well processed for easy retrieval and usage, not perfectly stored, and not properly secured against misuse. The study of Oluwaniyi (2015) was also in the area of preservation of library materials but in Oyo State School libraries, the study revealed that despite the fact that the school had the support of the management in the area of preservation, the library lacked information materials like journals and e-resources, there was also poor attitude to staff training at national and international levels. Literature, Ilo, Idiagbeyan-ose and Adebayo (2015) and Umar (2016), revealed that the major challenges militating against the libraries of the various schools and institutions in Nigeria included lack of infrastructure, lack of e-equipment, inadequate number of staff, erratic power supply and majorly lack of funds, all of which were some of the factors that breed ineffectiveness on the side of the librarians.
Job effectiveness of librarians can be measured using such indicators as the ability to achieve results which includes accomplishing a task within a set period, multi-tasking, implementing and changing plans when necessary to achieve goals and persistency in overcoming challenges (The Michigan State University, 2014). It also includes the ability to communicate effectively which has to do with being able to pass all necessary information through various formats without ambiguity and being mindful of various sensitive issues that could cause distortion in the message being passed. Ability to be dependable which involves being consistently punctual at work, carrying out duties with minimal errors; generally being careful and paying attention to details when performing duties and possessing the relevant knowledge to perform successfully are some indicators of job effectiveness. Ability to take the right decision that will benefit the various segments of the organization and the ability to plan and organize resources to achieve the desired result are also pointers to job effectiveness. Being able to solve problem using good judgment; producing highly under pressure and taking responsibility for actions, outcomes and errors are some other indicators of job effectiveness. It is the duty of the academic librarians to effectively perform these duties.
According to Bisharat, Obeidat, Alrowwad, Tarhni and Mukattash (2017) there are three reasons for performance assessment which include provision of feedbacks to supervisors and subordinates, development of employee’s performance and it also serves as documentation of employee’s performance for reference and legal purposes. Measuring librarians’ job effectiveness help to monitor progress and keep on track, to monitor implementation, to identify whether desired goals have been achieved, to understand how changed goals have been reached, to learn from the process for research and practice, and to identify and prioritize next steps. Besides, job effectiveness is measured to effect changes and performance. Measuring job effectiveness of librarians is similar to measuring the performance of librarians. In so doing, measurement will help understand change and will inform future decision.
Despite the various indicators that could be used in measuring the effectiveness of academic librarians, this study will use the LibQUAL as the measuring instrument to measure their effectiveness. The LibQUAL measures the effectiveness of librarians in three major dimensions known as service effect, information control and library as place the instrument has been well tested and acclaimed to be very effective (Cook, Heath, Thompson, Kyrilidou, Robuck & Yeager 2013). These are explained as follows:
Service Effect: this has to do with how well library users are served by library staff going by their professional knowledge, courtesy, care, readiness and the attention they are prepared to give to each of the library users.
Information Control: this is connected with provision and accessibility of information especially using modern information-technology equipment that will aid easy access to the needed information.
Library as Place: this is about librarians making the library environment meeting the needs of its users in the sense of its being comfortable to and inviting to encourage study and learning.
Good leadership as well as appropriate leadership styles could facilitate job effectiveness and by extension organizational effectiveness. Organizations all over the world depend to a large extent on the quality of leadership style provided by its front-runners which is often propelled by the nature of the organizational environment. Leadership is found in every area of organizational work and for a leader to and for a leader to be effective, he is expected to possess some skills, attributes and behavioural traits like communication skills, being knowledgeable about the work, having good intelligence, good interpersonal relationship with his team members, being humane, ability to listen to others, ability to motivate and reward appropriately. In addition to the qualities, a leader should be able to adopt a style of leadership that suites his work environment which is subject to change.
The concept of leadership is constantly changing just as the environments of organizations are changing especially in this information society where new information is constantly produced and made available. Therefore, a leader’s ability to rightly process information gathered through education or training or experience or a combination of all these may determine the effectiveness of the leader as quality information is a major ingredient for the success of any organization in the constantly changing information age. It is also important that a good leader should understand his work environment; he should know the strength and weakness of his followers and be able to get the best from their strength and positively impact on them to mitigate their weaknesses. He should be conversant with the goals of his organization and influence his team members to perform their tasks in line with them. Good leadership could influence the followership to perform effectively to the point of contributing to organizational effectiveness while bad leadership could lead to poor job performance and consequently poor organizational performance. Various factors could hinder the performance of a leader, these include: lack of knowledge of the job, lack of the right qualification for his job, lack of experience, lack of technical know-how, insensitivity to the work environments (internal and external), poor interpersonal relationship, poor communication skills, poor emotional intelligence and inability to motivate and reward team members appropriately.
A survey of library professionals conducted by Jange (2012) on preparing library and information science professionals for leadership revealed those leadership qualities respondents felt they already possessed and those leadership qualities respondents felt should be possessed by library managers. Ability to be committed and dedicated was on top of the list of skills expected of a library manager and was followed closely by possession of strong inter-personal and other communication skills and ability to care for colleagues and subordinates was third in the analysis. According to the respondents, the top five leadership qualities library managers should possess are innovation, creativity, imagination, vision, and commitment. Library staff especially those who deal with the public, directly reflect how the library is managed. A knowledgeable library leader should understand that the library is all about the people who work there. The changes occurring within libraries are pointer to the fact that emerging leaders in libraries should possess talents and strengths different from those commonly associated with traditional leadership (Philips, 2014).
Studies on leadership styles in Nigerian libraries revealed an array of styles being used by leaders in these libraries. Ogba (2013) discovered that the autocratic leadership style which was mostly used by library leaders in Delta State was perceived to be negative as it was one of the factors that militated against workers commitment. Contrary to Ogba (2013), Akor (2014) observed that library leaders in Benue State used more of democratic leadership style followed by bureaucratic leadership style while the least used style was autocratic leadership style. Segun-Adeniran (2015) on his part was of the opinion that appropriate use of transformational and democratic leadership styles in Nigerian libraries would lead to creativity and innovation.
The work of Ogbonna and Harris (2000) on leadership revealed that earliest studies on leadership dwelled more on the personality traits found in good leaders. The traits theorists believed that successful leaders were born with certain special qualities that stood them out from those who were not leaders. However there were problems in deciding these traits or qualities which led to much criticism of this approach to leadership studies and which led to the emergence of behavioural and style approaches to leadership studies. Various styles have been documented in literature which included some of the contemporary styles like transformational and transactional leadership styles. Some scholars who specialized on the study of leadership compared transactional leadership with transformational leadership (Burns, 1978 & Duncand , 2015). In their argument, they reasoned that transactional leaders are said to be frequently focused on exchange relationship with their subordinates. On the other hand transformational leaders are argued to be visionary and enthusiastic, with an inherent ability to motivate subordinates. Transformational leadership has been described as leaders who act as agents of their followers. Both leaders and supporters work together, in an equal relationship, to fulfill the collective goals of the group (Hicks & Given, 2013).
Literature has established that the very many leaderships styles frequently reported in the literature can be categorized into six main leadership styles emanating from either (1) the trait approach the oldest of the six which assumes that leaders are born with certain traits; (2) the behavioural approach which viewed leadership styles from the angle of the behaviour of the leader at work rather than his/her in-bred traits, (3) the contingency approach to leadership styles which believes that various factors in the environment of an organization informs the choice of leadership, (4) the relationship theory views leadership from the way a leader relates with his/her group members and impact them at work. Examples of relationship approach are transactional and transformational leadership (Cole and Kelly, 2011). The popular autocratic, democratic and laissez-faire Leadership styles are examples of behavioural leaders, (5) situational approach which argues that leadership effectiveness is dependent on the leader’s diagnosis and understanding of situational factors, followed by the adoption of the appropriate style to deal with each circumstance. Situational leadership style has to do with using different leadership styles for different situations. It is based on knowing organizational needs and individual motivation under different circumstances and (6) the exchange approach which is a suggestion that a leader’s behaviour is motivating or satisfying to the degree that the behaviour increases the goal attainments of the team members and clarifies the paths to these goals (Germano, 2010).
Those leadership styles which are dynamic and well suited for this change laden information age will be considered in this study. The leadership styles are discussed as follows: Transformational Leadership Style: the key profile of a transformational leader includes charismatic influence, inspiration motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individual consideration. Aligning the interests of the organization and its members is the task for the transformational leader. In contrast to the transactional leader who practices contingent reinforcement of followers, the transformational leader inspires, intellectually stimulates, and is individually considerate of them. Transformational leadership may be directive or participative.
Transactional Leadership Style: transactional leadership views the leader-subordinate relationship as a series of transactions or exchanges through the leader’s use of Contingent Rewards by exchanging punishment and rewards for follower compliance and effort in order to achieve overall organizational performance (Burns, 1978).
Laissez-faire Leadership Style: the laissez-faire leader allows his group members to solve problems their own way in difficult situations; believes that employees can do their work without guidance from the leader; lets subordinates appraise themselves; gives complete freedom to the followers to operate the way they choose; feels that workers need minimal input from the leader and generally believes that it is best to leave his followers alone (Northouse, 2011).
Leadership style could impact on various areas in the work place including the organizational culture. Organizational culture is the acceptable way of doing things in an organization which permeates every fibre of the work environment. A leader may dictate the culture of an organization or influence the workforce to behave in a particular way depending on the leadership style. It is also possible for the organizational culture to inform the style that a leader uses in his organization irrespective of the fact that he may have a personal preferred style. Various authors have written about the two factors in the work place among them were Osinbanjo and Adeniji (2013) who observed that organizational culture affects corporate performance and by extension the choice of leadership. The study of organizational culture is specifically relevant to libraries because there has been significant restructuring of these institutions, particularly with respect to the span and scope of services offered (Kaarst-Brown, Nicholson, VonDron & Stanton 2004). Where there is a definable group with a significant history an organization’s culture is initially formed as a result of early experiences and the influence of early leaders. Organizational culture is very difficult to define and different authors approached it in different ways but generally speaking they are symbols, values, behaviours, images, attitudes, assumptions that shape an organization and are commonly understood. Organizational culture is very important to every organization because like leadership, the success or failure of the organization could be determined by the way the culture is managed. Its importance could also be seen in the fact that it could help to determine the effectiveness of leadership. Organizational culture could also be managed to effect change in an organization. It generally determines the climate of an organization. Flamholtz and Randle (2012) described it to be a true and strategic asset for the companies which possess a strong positive culture such like Starbucks, Southwest Airlines, Wal-Mart or Google. Organizational culture encompasses values and behaviors that contribute to the unique social and psychological environment of an organization.
Organizational culture is determined by various factors which include the mission and vision of the organization, the work environment, the values of the founding fathers, the external factors of the organization like its customers, and their values, the competitors, government policy, location of the organization, the calibers of staff, the level of knowledge management in the organization. Organizational culture is multi-dimensional and various authors has classified the various dimension in various ways. It could be classified as either ethical or unethical. An ethical or unethical organizational culture can be described using Schein (2004) levels. For example, an artifact of an ethical culture might be a formal code of ethics, based on an espoused belief or value of ‘we conduct business honestly,’ which is an expression of the underlying assumption ‘if we cannot be ethical in conducting our business, we should not exist’. Organizational culture is reflected in different areas of the organizational work. It often originates from the values and vision of the company’s founders and it is shaped by top management’s actions and behaviours. Organizational culture is an intangible asset but it is a very important economic asset of business enterprises.
According to Cameron and Quinn (2006), four quadrants of organizational culture were postulated. They are: team culture, innovative culture, hierarchical and market culture. Team culture is a family type of culture where cohesion and shared values are paramount. Team cultures place emphasis on internal maintenance and concern for people, both customers and employees. Innovative culture is a common business culture characterized as dynamic, entrepreneurial and creative. Within an innovative culture, specialized teams are quickly formed and disbanded. Members strive to develop adaptability, flexibility, and creativity in order to quickly respond to changing markets. Innovative organizations develop innovative products and deliver them quickly. Hierarchical cultures exemplify formal, structured workplaces within the organization. Processes and procedures are well documented with controlled business activities. Leaders maintain efficient organizations and offer predictability and stability to employees. Rather than a common vision, the policies and procedures of the organization unite employees and allow them to complete organizational goals. When a new stimulus is introduced to the organization, which is not covered by existing policies or procedures, the organizations have difficulty determining the best course of action and are, therefore, often slow to respond or adapt to change.
To enforce the procedures, many levels of management are required to train workers and ensure process compliance. Similarly, promotions are highly regulated with agreed upon protocols for advancement, documented processes each employee must proceed through, and multiple levels to achieve before an employee becomes an official manager. The focus on established protocol, however, means that these same organizations do not respond well to change. When internal or external forces beyond the organizations’ control create a paradigm shift, the organization is often unprepared to successfully face the new challenges. The Market culture focuses on competitive measures such as external positioning and differentiation rather than flexibility and discretion. Members of market culture organizations do not focus on internal procedures resembling hierarchical cultures; Success in a market culture is measured by contributions to the financial bottom-line. They focus externally on making deals. Market cultures focus on increasing market share, productivity, and profits to improve their organization’s position.
A survey by Cameron and Quinn in 1999 using the Competing Values Framework (CVF) proposes that organizations reflect one or more of four cultural types: (a) clan, (b) hierarchy, (c) adhocracy, and (d) market. Moreover Kaarst-Brown, Nicholson, VonDron and Stanton (2004) extended the dimensions in which the CVF framework has been applied to the library setting. For example, in applying the CVF framework to libraries, one can assume that any one institution has a mixture of one or more of the following dominant characteristics: The library that emphasizes human development, high trust, openness, and participation (clan-oriented); a library that emphasizes acquiring new resources and creating new challenges, trying new things and prospecting for opportunities and value (adhocracy-oriented); the library which emphasizes competitive actions and achievement and where hitting stretch targets and winning points in the community are dominant (market-oriented) while the library where emphasis is placed on permanence and stability, efficiency, control, and smooth operations are equally important could be said to be hierarchy-oriented.
Literature search on organizational culture revealed a dearth of opinion papers and empirical studies relating to organizational culture in Nigerian libraries. However few researchers like Adeyoyin (2006) did a study on organizational culture and performance in Nigerian libraries and opined that organizational culture facilitated staff commitment and performance in libraries. Mamza, Bassi and Mohammed (2015) discovered a highly significant organizational culture among the library staff of three federal universities in North-East Zone of Nigeria. The research of Igbinovia and Popoola (2016) was carried out among library personnel in Edo State, Nigeria. The findings of the research showed that the respondents were high performers with good organizational culture. It was further revealed that there was a significant and positive relationship between organizational culture and job performance of these library personnel.
Various researchers in the field of organizational culture like Schein (2004) and Cameron and Quinn (1999 and 2006) came up with different models of organizational culture but this research will use the Denison model of organizational culture which has summed up all the different types of culture in an organization to four cultures, namely mission, adaptability, involvement and consistency, these are recognizable and measurable. They are explained as follows.
Mission: shows why staff does what they do; the purpose for the existence of the organization; the objectives, goals, strategic plan and the vision of the organization. It shows the link between staff effectiveness and organizational vision.
Adaptability: organizations that perform well easily adapt, as they are always interested in innovations. Adaptability, according to theory, is measured by the three indices: creating change, customer focus, and organizational learning.
Involvement: organizations with good performance encourage employees’ involvement by specifying the areas where employees can make their contributions and those areas where they cannot. Thus a sub-culture of informed empowerment is promoted. The empowerment and teamwork necessary to address the competitive environment can be expressed as involvement. Indices measuring involvement are as follows: empowerment, team orientation, and capability development.
Consistency: consistency and stability are taken care of by all high-performing organizations by having core values that help employees and leaders in taking consistent decisions and behaving in a particular manner consistently. The employees of such organization interact in order to get various views that help reach agreement in times of challenges this trait is measured by: core values, agreement, and coordination and integration.
From the foregoing it could be seen that this study is carried out to examine the relationship among leadership styles, organizational culture, and job effectiveness of academic librarian in South-West, Nigerian. Literature has shown that some of these librarians were not performing well enough in some areas like provision of internet, availability of collections (print and non-print) and infrastructure. It was also revealed that libQUAL is not a common measuring tool for measuring job effectiveness among these researchers. It has also been revealed that various leadership styles like autocratic, democratic, bureaucratic and transformational leadership styles were being used by library leaders going by some researches. Literature has also shown that there is a dearth of studies on organizational culture in Nigerian libraries with just few researches being available; the Denison model of organizational culture was also not popular among the researchers. Therefore this study investigated the extent to which leadership style (in terms of transformational, transactional and laissez-faire) and organizational culture (in terms of mission, adaptability, involvement and consistency) influenced job effectiveness (in terms of service effect, information control and library as place) of librarians in universities in South-West, Nigeria.
In Nigeria, academic librarians are those librarians that are found in higher institutions of learning like universities, polytechnics and colleges of education. They hold similar academic qualifications to those of the teaching faculty in addition to their professional qualifications. They are responsible for collecting, processing and sharing information materials in various formats for the purpose of dissemination of needed information to the library users in the areas of teaching, learning and research. This study is going to concentrate on only those academic librarians working in universities in South-West, Nigeria. South-West, Nigeria is one of the six geo-political zones that make up Nigeria. It is made up of six states which are: Lagos, Ogun, Oyo, Osun, Ondo and Ekiti States. There were thirty-six working universities in South-West, Nigeria when this study was carried out, comprising of seven (7) federal, seven (7) state-owned and twenty-one (21) private universities.
The present period is known as information and knowledge age when information and knowledge play vital roles in the lives of individuals, communities and the society as a whole. As such, libraries, especially the ones in academic institutions, are expected to be the vanguard of acquiring, processing, storing and disseminating of information to information users so that they can have access to information in both print and non-print formats in a dynamic information society. In order to be able to do this effectively, libraries need librarians that are effective in meeting the needs of library users. However literature and observation have shown that some librarians in Nigeria are not effective in the area of provision of adequate collections and infrastructure to meet the expectation of users in the area of library work in today’s information age. This situation might have arisen because of various factors in the work environment of the academic librarians like leadership style and organizational culture which could have positive or negative impact on job effectiveness.
Therefore this study was carried out in order to find out whether the human resources practices of leadership style and organizational culture have any influence on the effectiveness of academic librarians that could be probably responsible for the poor performance of librarians in South-West, Nigeria.
The main objective of this study is to find out the relationship among leadership styles, organizational culture and job effectiveness of librarians in the universities in South-West Nigeria. The specific objectives are to:
- determine the degree of job effectiveness of librarians in South -West universities in Nigeria;
- find out the leadership styles of librarians in universities in South West, Nigeria;
- ascertain the dimensions of organizational culture in universities in South-West, Nigeria;
- find out the relationship of leadership styles with job effectiveness of librarians in universities in South-West, Nigeria;
- determine the relationship of organizational culture with job effectiveness of librarians in universities in South-West, Nigeria;
- find out the influence of the combination of leadership styles and organizational culture on the job effectiveness of librarians in the universities in South-West, Nigeria and
- ascertain the challenges faced by librarians in the universities in South-West Nigeria as regards leadership style, organizational culture and job effectiveness.
To achieve the identified objectives, the following research questions were answered in the study.
- what is the degree of job effectiveness of librarians in the universities in South-West, Nigeria?
- what is the leadership style of librarians in the universities in South-West, Nigeria?
- what is the dimension of organizational culture in the universities in South-West,
Nigeria?
- what are challenges being faced by librarians in the universities in South-West Nigeria in relation to leadership style, organizational culture and job effectiveness?
The following null-hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of probability (p<.05) level of significance.
H01: There is no significant relationship between leadership styles and job effectiveness of librarians in the universities in South-West, Nigeria.
H02: There is no significant relationship between organizational culture and job effectiveness of librarians in the universities in South-West, Nigeria.
H03: The combination of leadership style and organizational culture will not significantly influence job effectiveness of librarians in the universities in South-West, Nigeria.
This study focused on finding out librarians’ leadership styles and organizational culture and their effect on workers’ job effectiveness. It established the relationship between leadership styles, organizational culture and the job effectiveness of librarians. Professional librarians were used for this study; they included anyone with a first degree or masters in librarianship. Therefore, non-university graduates were excluded.
The study was carried out in university libraries (public and private) in South-West, Nigeria. The study focused only on the contemporary leadership styles which include transformational, transactional and laissez-faire leadership styles. It was limited to the Denison (2009) model of organizational culture which has mission, adaptability, involvement and consistency as its four dimensions while the LibQUAL model of service quality was also used in considering job effectiveness the LibQUAL has three segments which are: service effect, information control and library as place.
This study is of high importance because it is on human resources practices which are relevant to every corporate organization; the study would help human resources practitioners in understanding further the relationship among leadership styles, organizational culture and job effectiveness. It would especially be beneficial to management of parent-organizations of academic libraries as they would get to understand the relationship among leadership styles organizational culture and job effectiveness be able to adopt various leadership styles to suit different organizational culture in order to get the best from the library staff. The library leadership in various areas of life would also gain from this research as it would help them to get the synergy among leadership styles, the work environment and the effectiveness of their followers. The study would help librarians, irrespective of their cadre; appreciate the role of good and effective leadership in a dynamic, culturally organized work environment with a view to developing right attitudes towards leadership and organizational culture in order to get the best from libraries. The study would also contribute to knowledge by adding to existing literature on leadership styles, organizational culture and job effectiveness.
1.8 Operational Definition of Terms
Leadership: this is a process that makes it possible for a university librarian to influence library staff in order to achieve set objectives and goals of the library.
Leadership styles: these have to do with the various ways used by university librarians to influence their followership or group to achieve optimum performance. They include: transformational, transactional and laissez-faire
Transformational leadership: leadership that borders on charisma, motivation, inspiration, stimulation and consideration.
Transactional leadership: leadership that involves agreement, and conditional rewards.
Laissez-Faire leadership: the leader is lenient, gives freedom, less control and less involvement in decision making. Care-free attitude is generally exhibited by the leader.
Organizational culture: this refers to the way things are done in an organization. Organizational culture is a set of values, norms, and a set of outcomes, or a way of being that is shared by people in an organization. It shapes, guides and influences the way people think and act in an organization. It includes the various dimensions in Denison model which are: mission, adaptability, involvement and consistency.
Mission: Includes organizational vision, strategic direction, goals and objectives.
Adaptability: creating change, customer focus, and organizational learning.
Involvement: empowerment of the workforce of an organization, creating a sense of teamwork and building capability.
Consistency: core values, agreement, and coordination and integration.
Job effectiveness: this means the ability to complete designated job-related tasks in a successful, efficient manner, in the library it includes: service effect, information control and library as place.
Service effect: the competency and helpfulness of staff in service provision.
Information control: provision and accessibility of information.
Library as place: library being comfortable and inviting.