Impact of Leadership Practices on Organisational Culture in Select University Libraries

Abstract

Academic libraries in this knowledge and technology driven society continue to dominate in providing access to information to their clientele like students, scholars, academicians, and other information seekers. Presently, their role becomes critical as they act as a catalyst and connector by linking students, scholars, and information together for generating new insights into teaching and learning. Academic libraries can play effective role in delivering their services, provided a positive culture is created and promoted for library staff. It calls for the role of university librarians to focus on developing healthy culture in libraries through delivering sound leadership practices which would eventually enhance library staff’s performance in serving their stakeholders better. Keeping the above facts in view, the present paper is aimed to examine the impact of leadership practices on organisational culture in select university libraries. The present study targeted 120 library staff from two universities in Jammu & Kashmir (J&K). Simple random sampling was used to gather information from respondents. Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ Form 5X) developed by (Bass & Avolio, 1995) was used to measure leadership practices, whereas OCTAPACE values were adapted from HRD Climate Survey developed by Rao and Abraham (1986) to study organisational culture. The reliability of constructs varied from 0.74 to 0.82 and from 0.71 to 0.85 in leadership practices and organisational culture, respectively. The data collected were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics. The findings of the study revealed that leadership practices significantly influence organisational culture in university libraries. On the basis of the findings, the study suggests that leadership practices prevailing in sample select libraries need to be more effective and result oriented which would develop sound and positive culture at their workplaces.

Keywords: Leadership Practices, OCTAPACE Culture, Transformational Leadership, University Libraries

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