Introduction

Changing times require new management and leadership styles. Open, inclusive, community led and needs based libraries require leaders and managers who focus on ‘doing the right thing’ as well as ‘doing the thing right.’

Embedded and sustained cultural change is a holy grail that has been pursued for many years. This chapter provides an analytical framework (Pateman and Pateman, 2019, 43–85) for achieving cultural change in public libraries, one of the longest and most enduring public sector institutions.

This analytical framework has been developed by synthesising the ideas of Karl Marx (Base and Superstructure, Quantitative and Qualitative Change), Abraham Maslow (The Hierarchy of Needs), and management concepts such as Blue Ocean Strategy (the three tiers of non customers) and Good to Great (level 5 leadership).

This mixture of political science and psychology provides a new way of framing the challenge of cultural change in public libraries. It creates a solid conceptual and theoretical basis for the changes required to transform Traditional Libraries (which serve only a minority of the community) into libraries which are Community Led and Needs Based (which are truly open to all).

This analytical framework will enhance our understanding of public libraries; but to understand the world is not enough – we must also seek to change it. This chapter also gives practical examples of how the analytical framework can be applied. It will be of interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students, practitioners and policy makers in the UK, Europe and North America.

This chapter is in three parts. Part one describes the analytical framework that enables public libraries to understand where they stand on the Traditional – Community Led – Needs Based spectrum. Part two describes what a Traditional, Community Led and Needs Based library looks like in terms of its Strategy, Structures (Staff and Services), Systems and Organis - ational Culture. Part three draws some conclusions and offers a way forward for managing cultural change in public libraries.

The analytical framework

Organisational culture has been described as those parts of a public library that we cannot see because they are all around us. It is ‘the way we do things around here’.