Book reviews 55

can create ‘new business opportunities’ if followed up promptly and effectively. The only danger may be a tendency to ‘over survey’. This might be counter- productive and as all researchers and many forward-looking librarians know, there are other techniques which can and should be used to provide supplementary information without asking too many people too many questions too many times. There are still many faced with difficult choices in managing information and library services in local government who have failed to ask any of these questions to any of their customers on any occasion. To these this report can be especially recommended as urgent and essential reading from which action as outlined in the manual should undoubtedly follow.

Don Kennington Capital Planning Information

John R. Rizzo. Management for librarians: fundamentals and issues. London: Aldwych Press; Westport (Conn.1: Greenwood Press, 1980. 339 pp. ISBN 0 86172 009 1. f19.95.

The mild boredom which I experienced as I traversed the 324 pages of text led me to ask myself whether I was being ‘unreasonable’ in my expectations. It seemed helpful, therefore, to organize my review in terms of my criteria of a library management textbook.

1. IS it comprehensive-that is to say, does it cover all the main concerns of the librarian-manager ? Rizzo’s book is aimed at ‘aspiring and practising librarians’, for ‘novices as well as seasoned practitioners’, but it does not claim to be comprehensive. It does not address itself to all the problems library managers must face. Its bias is in ‘the direction of organizational effectiveness and efficiency, structural design and dynamics and the components of working life described in the fields of behavioural and organizational psychology’. Nearly one-third is concerned with planning, objectives, systems theory, accountability, control and organizational design, and the remainder with staff motivation, groups in organizations, appraisal, training, organization develop- ment and leadership. ‘Certain speciality areas are not covered with the attention they deserve, e.g. personnel selection’ and the author steers away from quantitative methods, operations research and ‘only briefly discusses budgetary and financial matters’.

A reviewer cannot find fault with an author for not doing what he does not claim to do. On the other hand, this book is written very much in the style of a textbook, and it appeals-if at all-as a textbook, rather than as a linked series of innovative, controversial and strategically selected topics (which, unhappily, it is not). Therefore, if the reader wants a textbook, he would surely prefer a relatively comprehensive one, such as those by Stueart and Eastlick ( 197 7) and Evans (1976).

Furthermore, only when we come to write about it does management become a series of ‘topics’, like eggs on a shelf. In practice, it is always scrambled eggs. Perhaps the biggest problem in teaching management (and writing textbooks) is to help students to move beyond the successively introduced topics to some understanding of the real life complexity. One bit of string is knotted to every other bit of string in a mutually dependent network-or tangle. Therefore, each textbook topic needs to be presented so

56 Book reuzewJ

that it reflects something of’ other, related topics (e.g. what are the implications for staff’ job satisfaction of’ automation?). This strengthens the argument for some attempt at compr-ehensiveness, even if some topics receive briefer treatment than others. It also suggests the riced for a concluding, holistic section, in which all the previously treated topics are disentangled before the reader’s eyes through some pervasive topic or, better still, by a case study. Rizzo’s book meets this requirement to some extent with its concluding chapter on leadership-though the integrating possibilities here are not fully developed.

2. Our model library management textbook needs 2.1 10 present the theory, relate it, 2.2 to the practice of‘management of organizations in general, and, 2.3 to relate it specifically to the ntanagement of libraries and information

systems, the whole richly and compellingly illustrated and exemplified in terms of the librarian’s everyday experience, and vividly to picture that experience for the student and beginner. This is not some baroque ideal; a library management textbook based upon ‘telling it how it is’ should easily be able to give the lie to management as the other dismal science.

As to 2.1 and 2.2, the present book does, on the whole, offer a fair summary of the theory and underlying management principles, and there are particularly useful introductions to, and discussions of, motivation theory, appraisal practice and leadership theory. Unfortunately, even at the 2.2 level examples are rare. The landscape of abstraction is little relieved by cases of human interest. The reader has to conjure up the mirages from her own experience.

The most serious single criticism of this book, however, is at the 2.3 level. The author did not ‘search the literature in which librarians write to other librarians on management topics. Therefore I rarely refer to such work and do not incorporate, interpret or critique it.’ (p. 324). Yet the author hopes to provide a ‘bridge fro 111 one field [management] to another [librarianship]‘. Therefore, although each chapter concludes with a useful selection of further readings, very few of these relate to library organizations and their problems. And yet, for almost every chapter, there exist worthwhile contributions from the literature of librarianship which are excluded from the author’s concern. There are some topics which have quite substantial bodies of (excluded) literature, e.g. on the evaluation of library services (Allred, 1979), a controversial field, wherein the reader is referred only to F. W. Lancaster’s Measurement and evaluation o/ library services ( 19 7 7), though ‘encouraged to use Lancaster’s text as a source of numerous additional references on the topic’. (p. 36). There are also numerous more specific topics where essential readings exist for the librarian wtrich are excluded as a matter of policy (e.g. the classic work of Zachert (1975) on library management simulation teaching). All this is more the pity in that Rizzo is a management academic attd consultant with much experience of tutoring librarians a11tl presunrably could have offered us some valuable comment on the literature of library management.

Not only does Rizzo’s ‘bridge’ ti-or11 management in general not reach across to the libi-arianship literature, but it also makes little contact with the practice of librarianship. Again and again the impact of generalizations is lost because they remain hanging at a theoretical level. Good examples are staff-and-line (p. 108-9) and matrix (Il.1 15). The rare references are to American library

Book reviews 57

practice only-or so it appears-so that the effect is even more muffled for British readers. (For example, the statement that ‘matrix organisation is not widely or fully practised by library. . . organisations’ is certainly untrue of U.K. practice). Again, the chapter on organizational effectiveness and efficiency is exceptional in that includes three pages specifically concerned with the librarianship literature, but this gives no hint as to the controversial nature of the topic whereas the contribution by Oldman and Wills (1978) does.

3. However, all is not lost, for there is a third desideratum for a library management textbook, to which Rizzo refers when he writes that ‘Management is not without its issues and controversies, and a serious attempt is made to pose these rather than pretend they did not exist’. Truly, management textbooks are all too often merely descriptive and prescriptive and lack the critical and the imaginative. If the reader is to be able to make up his or her own mind about the practicability of some theory or technique, the author can help in two ways.

First, discussion should be opened on the strengths, weaknesses and contingent circumstances, reaching out to the reader’s own experience. Rizzo has, for example, an interesting section on management by objectives (with occasional reference to libraries) but there is virtually no critical discussion of this highly controversial topic, still less, of course, of its applicability to libraries. Moreover, here as elsewhere the not insignificant literature of librarianship is excluded. (For references, see Jones, 1979).

Secondly, the author should take the reader of his or her textbook backstage sometimes and introduce some of the theoretical and research foundation -the academic underpinning. This can be both intellectually exciting and also sobering. The confident prescriptions of ‘management science’ can look very different after a viewing of the critical debates and slender supports in the underlying organization theory. There is very little of this in Rizzo’s book. He does write in this way about the controversy surrounding the ideas of power and authority (rehearsed every time subordinate and supervisor meet), but stops short relatively early in the century with the thinking of Charles Barnard and Mary Parker Follet. What about all those organization sociologists (worse still, Marxists) with their power and conflict theories and their disturbing notions about professionalism ? For the rest, there is very little of this kind of exploration in the present volume. The systems theory of organization, for example, is introduced (as in most management textbooks) quite uncritically, whereas phenomenological and conflict theory approaches could have been introduced to balance it. This would have made life a little more difficult for the reader who seeks to profit practically from the theory, but it is not the purpose of theory to make things simple, but to make them more understandable, and hence ultimately more manageable. This can upset the simplifications with which, over the years, we tend to upholster our organizational lives. But, then, education should be a disturbing, an interesting and an entertaining experience.

In brief; this is a mildly interesting management textbook which, despite its title, has little direct value to librarians-who-manage (and the others who also have to come to terms with organization life). They would be better served by a combination of the library management literature-despite its many inade- quacics-and by the livelier general management textbooks,

Ken Jones School of Librarianship, Leeds Polytechnic

58 Book reviews

REFERENCES

ALLRED, J. (1979). The measurement of library services: an appraisal of current problems and possibdtties. Bradford: MCB Publications.

EVANS, G. EDWARD (1976). ,Management techniquesfor librarians. New York: Academic Press. JONES, K. H. (1979). The objectives approach to the management of libraries and

infi~rnmation departments. In: (A. Vaughan, ed.). Studies in library management, vol. 2, pp. 69-9 1. London: Bingley.

LANCASTER, F. w. (197 7). Measurement and evaluatzon of library servtces. Washington, D.C.: Information Resources Press.

OLDMAN, c. and WILLS, G. (1978). A reafijrraisal of academic lzbrarzanship. Bradford: MCB Publications.

STUEART, ROBERT D. and EASTLICK, J. T. (1977). Lzbrary management. Littleton, Colorado: Libraries Unlimited.

ZACHERT, MARTHA JANE K. (1975). Szmulation teaching of library adminzstratzon. New York: Bowkrt-.

James C. Nayldr, Robert D. Pritchard and Daniel R. Ilgen. A the09 of behavior in organizations. New York: Wiley, 1980. 299 pp. ISBN 0 12 514450 4 cl3.60.

At first sight it seems curious that a book with this title should lack the word ‘communication’ in its index: closer examination, however, reveals why this is the case. Naylor and his colleagues choose a particular definition of ‘behavior in organizations’ which relies upon the concept of ‘products’. That is :

‘If behavior produces or creates an observable entity or thing and if that thing . . is viewed as being important to some observer, then the behavior is a relevant behavior to that observer . we refer to those things that are created by performing an act as products.’ (p. 7 1

Then :

‘We define organizational behavior as those products which are evaluated by someone in that organization or by the focal person. Thus, unless a product is first observed, then measured, and finally placed on some good-bad evaluative continuum by someone in the organization or by the individual, that product does not help to define the set of behaviors we call organizational behavior.’ (p.29)

The question that arises, given these definitions, is then, ‘How far is communication behaviour (or information-seeking behaviour) evaluated in organizations in terms of its products. 2’ The answer to this question is difficult to find as manv (perhaps most?) of the ‘products’ of such behaviour will be changes in the internal cognitive or affective states of the individual and, for many kinds of work, may not be evaluated by the individual. In other words, communication has a taken-for-granted status for the person and, therefore, in this theory is also taken for granted.

There are many instances, however, where communication and information- seeking lead to, or contribute towards, ‘observable products’ which are evaluated: for example, internal reports to management or other superiors, patentable products from an engineering laboratory, students’ essays in a univcrsihl, and so on. Again, however, in the theorv presented here the communication or information-seeking components of’ the product-c-I-eating acts are treated, generally, implicitly.