ABSTRACT: Leadership development is such an imperative topic that it cannot be overstated in any management discussion for any industry or field. According to a recent survey conducted by professional associations, nearly 50% of senior American library leaders, including those at the director level, will retire by 2010. Findings of such surveys raise strategically important issues – Is the library profession ready to pass the torch to next generation of leaders? How are the next generations of leaders to be assessed, selected, and developed? What are the core leadership attributes or the ideal profile of future library leaders? How can future library leaders be cultivated with global perspectives?

U.S. libraries have pioneered in library leadership development. A number of leadership development programs across all segments of the library profession have been established. Experience from those programs with highly influential outcomes may be applied to libraries elsewhere in the world. The increasing globalization in business practice has a great impact on leadership development in all industries. Cultural Intelligence or Cultural Quotient (CQ) has been identified as one of the most important leadership attributes in addition to Emotional Intelligence or Emotional Quotient (EQ) and Analytical Intelligence or Analytical Quotient (IQ). The increasing dependency of global resource sharing in library and information services has created demands for libraries and fostered the new frontier of global collaboration. A new concept of Global Library is emerging. Future library leaders with global perspectives will be highly sought after.

“I feel about globalization a lot like I feel about the dawn… I didn't start globalization, I can't stop it…”

– Thomas Friedman from “The World is Flat”

“The Jack Welch of the future cannot be me. I spent my entire career in the United States. The next head of General Electric will be somebody who spent time in Bombay, in Hong Kong, in Buenos Aires. We have to send our best and brightest overseas and make sure they have the training that will allow them to be the global leaders who will make GE flourish in the future.”

– Jack Welch, former CEO, GE

I. Introduction

The world is flattening. Globalization has an impact on every industry, and library and information services are no exception. The emerging global library operational environment creates demand for new leaders possessing highly cross-cultural management skills. Accordingly, library leadership development needs to add new dimensions to the global library leadership development. The practice of current library leadership development has focused on local and special segment needs with less updated curriculum.

Cultural Intelligence or Cultural Quotient (CQ) has been identified as one of the most important leadership attributes in addition to Emotional Intelligence or Emotional Quotient (EQ) and Analytical Intelligence or Analytical Quotient (IQ). However, in the literature of library leadership development, there are no discussions nor applications of CQ yet. In this paper, the authors use the Chinese culture as an example to explore the value of CQ in the library leadership development.

II. Globalization and Its Impact on Librarianship

In The World is Flat, Friedman (2006) describes the globalization as the interweaving of markets, technology, information systems and telecommunications systems in a way that is shrinking and flattening the world. Globalization enables us to reach around the world farther, faster, deeper, and cheaper than ever before, and vise versa.

Rikowski (2005) expounds four contradictory dimensions in which globalization manifests. The first dimension is the cultural dimension. In globalization, the diversity of various cultures in the world as well as the challenge of homogenizing different cultures must be acknowledged. The second dimension addresses the vanishing of national power in the global economy, with the emergence of so many transnational organizations, such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. These transnational organizations set up the standards of the field in the world and greatly influence the national organizations. The third dimension is the capital’s expansion, which illustrates the individual lives in the global market. The last but the most important dimension is the global labor value. With globalization, employers can hire the best value labor across the world to maximize profit. These four contradictory dimensions demonstrate that globalization brings opportunities as well as challenges to us.

2. What is the global library?

Not long ago, “the end of stand-along library” was an evil omen. Now it seems that “the end of local library” might come soon, as the beginning of the “global library” is on the horizon.

Globalization, the most progressive global movement since the Industry Revolution, has brought an enormous impact to every single continent and every single industry. As libraries are increasingly obtaining resources from and providing services to users all across the world, a new model of library services and operations emerges, which is referred to as the Global Library (GL) in this paper.

The Global Library can be defined with the following key characteristics: 1) is globally accessible in either virtual or physical library environment; 2) provides global users with 24x7 services; 3) hosts global-focused library collections and resources; 4) employs global talents; 5) operates globally, even though the headquarters are in a home country; 6) is actively engaged in library-related activities for global communities.

The benefits of the Global Library:

• Integration of resources
• Equal access to local and global resources
• Maximized productivity and minimized operational cost
• Leverage the local and specialized talents
• Promotion of international library standards and preservation of local civilization and culture as well

The challenges of the Global Library:

• Preservation of the local culture
• Balance of various cultures in management
• Understanding of local religion, ideology, political systems, etc.
• Requirement of new managerial skill sets in a global and cross-cultural management environment

Some existing examples of the global library or global library-like services:

• OCLC virtual reference QuestionPoint (http://www.oclc.org/questionpoint/about/default.htm)
• Global distance education with library services (http://www.logintolearn.com/nextdistance.html)
• Global Library Initiative (http://www.globallibrary.org/en/index.php)
• Multi-National Corporate (MNC) global library services (http://www.online-information.co.uk/2004proceedings/thursam/heye_d.pdf)

III. Overview of Leadership Theories

Leadership is a popular topic in many fields, such as management studies and behavior studies. Such discussions can be found not only in western literature, but also in Chinese traditional literature which was written over a thousand years ago.

Different definitions of leadership emphasize on various aspects of leadership. Maxwell (1999) defined leadership in that “Leadership is influence – nothing more, nothing less” (p. 17). As a leader, influence is the most important thing. A manager needs a position to influence others, but a leader does not need such a position. “Leadership is also a performing art – a collection of practices and behaviors – not a position … thus we define leadership as the art of mobilizing others to want to struggle for shared aspirations” (Kouzes & Posner, 2002, p.30).

Just as Lao Tse (老子) mentioned, a leader is the catalyst. “Leadership is communicating to people their worth and potential so clearly that they come to see it in themselves.” (Covey, 2004, p.122). Leaders empower the followers to reach their potential, which may be even beyond the followers’ abilities that they realize. “Leadership is creating an environment in which people want to be part of the organization and not just work for the organization. Leadership creates an environment that makes people want to, rather than have to do …” (Covey, 2004, p. 217). In an organization, a true leader can create an exciting and encouraging culture which attracts followers to devote themselves to the organization and to make the contributions with passion. The followers work for the organization not only for making a living, but for the hearty love for the job. Mason and Wetherbee (2004) summarized the key characteristics of leadership as compared to management (Table 1).

2. Leadership theories

There are eight recognized universal leadership theories in the field, including great man theory, trait theory, behavioral theories, participative leadership, situational leadership, contingency theories, transactional leadership, and transformational leadership, as shown in Table 2.

IV. Cultural Intelligence (CQ) and Its Implication with Global Library Management

Traditionally, people measure rational and logic-based verbal and quantitative intelligence by Intelligence Quotient (IQ) tests. Recently, leadership studies have placed Emotional Intelligence (EQ) as a prominent factor to determine success, which can be measured by EQ tests. Nowadays, in addition to IQ and EQ, Cultural Intelligence (CQ) which can be measured by CQ tests is now coming into existence. Studies have revealed that people’s facial expression to show the emotions, such as happiness, surprise, fear, sadness, anger, and disgust, are based on their cultural background (Alon & Higgins, 2005). For example, Americans and Japanese may use quite different facial expression to express the same feeling.

Earley and Ang (2003) defined Cultural Intelligence as “person’s capability for successful adaptation to new cultural settings; that is, for unfamiliar settings attributable to cultural context” (p. 9). They described CQ in two types and three major categories.

Two types of CQ are:

1. Organizational Cultural Intelligence;
2. Personal Cultural Intelligence - related to geographic/ethnic culture.

Three categories are:

• Cognitive (CQ from “head”): This refers to conceptual understanding of differences among cultures. Examples include asking questions about what motivate people in different environments.
• Physical (CQ from “body”): This refers to cultural differences reflected by observable physical actions. Examples include how different cultures tolerate “touch” – hug and kiss on cheeks between male and female colleagues in greeting each other may be okay in Latin America or France, but in other countries like U.S. might not be well received or even could cause accusation of sexual harassment.
• Emotional/motivational (CQ from “heart”): This may be the hardest or most complex component of cultural intelligence. It has the closest relationship with EQ, the Emotional (or Social) Intelligence. Examples include an understanding of the dynamics in a diverse working group.

2 Cross-cultural management with Cultural Intelligence (CQ)

The cross-cultural management refers to the management practice in organizations with heterogeneous cultural settings where cultural factors and sensitivities are being taken into primary consideration in the organizational decision-making processes and framework.

In the growth of globalization in the business world, the increasingly dynamic change in conducting business globally will require leaders to have the global aspect of functional business skill sets. The more important challenge is that as human resources and talents become commodity, it will require leaders to possess inter-cultural skills, including CQ, to perform an effective cross-cultural management. The higher the CQ the leader possesses, the more capable the leader is in the cross-cultural management.

3. Cross-cultural management in library and information setting

Although cross-cultural management concept and applications have grown popular in international or multi-national corporate business, they are relatively new in library management. As libraries are going through the transition towards the global library, the cross-cultural management challenge is inevitably coming to library management.

One familiar application of cross-cultural management in library settings is managing diversity. Most definitions of diversity are mainly based on the following ideas: 1) people’s diversity can add value to the organization if managed effectively; 2) diversity includes a lot of ways in which people differ from each other such as education, sexual orientation as well as gender, ethnicity, disability, etc.; 3) diversity is a primary concern in organizational culture and working environment. Libraries have been a front runner in managing and promoting diversity.

American Library Association (ALA) has declared that diversity is one of the five key action areas to fulfill its mission to provide the best services to patrons. ALA promotes equity in information access and library services for all library users. It also encourages libraries to recruit underrepresented groups and foster a diverse working environment in all libraries. ALA sets its diversity vision as follow:

In addition to the above example of managing library workforce, examples are also found in the area of library patron management. Norberg (2005) summarized some typical library-specific CQ issues in supporting American and international students.

• Language used in library services: To international students, “book check out” may mean to “examine” or to “pay for” the book.
• Nonverbal communication at the information or reference desk:
  • Eye contact: American students look at people directly to indicate attention and respect. International student from other cultures may look away or down to show respect.
  • Space: Middle Eastern students get very close and Japanese students keep a distance.
• Directness vs. indirectness in reference interview: American students are more direct and assertive than international students. Students from Asian countries may nod even when they do not understand, because they do not want to make you or themselves upset or embarrassed.

4. Cross-cultural management with an analysis, using Chinese culture as an example

Rooted from its long history and rich civilization, Chinese culture carries many distinctive characteristics and has deep impact on Chinese management philosophy. For example, individualism is considered as one of the main cultural characters in Western societies; in contrast, collectivism is regarded as a typical cultural character in East Asia.

In cross-cultural management, one needs to be aware of the differences among various cultures. The challenge of cross-cultural management lies on the integration, understanding, and even tolerance of cultural differences. Effective cross-cultural management strives to maximize adaptation and productivity among different cultures, regardless of a manager’s personal preference.

Individualism and collectivism are typical in the Western and Chinese cultures respectively. Table 3 summaries some management behavioral examples, derived from individualism vs. collectivism in Western and Chinese society.

5 Library leadership development programs (LDPs) in U.S. and China

With globalization, organizations, large or small, for-profit or not-for-profit, have undergone tremendous changes. Libraries are not exempted from such changes. Leadership is regarded as the most critical component of an effective organization that adapts to changes quickly.

Although leadership development programs have been a popular management training topic in the business world, the leadership concept and theories did not appear in the library literature until 1980s (Mason & Wetherbee, 2004). Leadership was not even a subject heading or index term in the library literature. Don Riggs, in conducting his research for a book on library leadership, found only very few entries for librarianship and leaders in Library Literature for the years 1975–1981 (Riggs, 1998). Instead, some other subject headings were used in the place of leadership, such as “administration”, “librarianship”, “organizational behavior”, “personnel” and specific type of subject headings such as TQM (Total Quality Management).

In contrast, leadership exists as a subject heading in the major indexes for other professions, such as finance, accounting and nursing. This fact indicates that the lack of “leadership” as a subject heading is not only an access issue, but also a problem, which indicates that leadership as a concept in the profession of librarianship may have not been acknowledged as a legitimate discussion topic or entity, and have not been clearly defined and differentiated from other library management topics (Karp & Murdock, 1998).

Library leadership programs are one important way to address the library leadership and arouse librarians’ awareness of the need for leadership training. Mason and Wetherbee (2004) conducted a quite comprehensive review of thirty-one library leadership programs in the U.S. Six of them are mainly oriented towards academic librarians, as shown in Table 4.

Table 5 lists the information of three Chinese library leadership programs which are also targeted at academic librarians in China.

American libraries have pioneered in the field of library leadership development (LDP). Lessons learned from American libraries’ practices on LDP might be applied to libraries elsewhere.

American’s LDPs have been highly praised of their curriculum design, marketing/promotion, cross-segment coverage and so on. However, some major lessons learned in American’s LDPs can be valuable for others when they design their own LDPs.

• Lesson 1: Lacking of well-designed and controlled, even consistent, evaluation method made it difficult to assess the efficacy of LDPs. As Mason and Wetherbee (2004) pointed out that “very few published evaluations on library leadership training programs have been designed to yield stable and valid results about the impact of these programs on the abilities and careers of training program participants.” There have been no consistent evaluation methods or processes identified for either vertical segment or horizontally comparative segment of LDPs.
• Lesson 2: Lacking of a shared definition of leadership for librarians or library professionals constrained LDP programs’ growth beyond traditional management development training. Without a shared definition of what the leadership means to librarians, it is difficulty to establish, develop and evaluate a set of consistent and desirable leadership qualities and traits for both existing and future library leaders. It is also difficult to outgrow the program in order to develop leaders in dealing with transformational changes in today’s libraries.
• Lesson 3: Lacking of specially tailored curriculum for targeted audience and segment limited LDPs’ potential to develop and attract library leaders who work in specialized library segments such as medical or corporate libraries.

Very little information can be found from deep web research on Chinese library LDPs. Those programs identified here are still in the early development or experimental stage.

Cooperation and collaboration with Western libraries seem to be the main theme for Chinese library LDPs. Hong Kong libraries’ LDP followed closely of the US Association of Research Libraries’ practice, and they even brought in American facilitators for instruction. (See: http://lib.hku.hk/leadership/) Another interesting program is the one which is jointly organized by Chinese Academy of Library Science and University of Illinois (UIUC) Graduate School of Library and Information Science. (Lynn, 2006, http://www.news.uiuc.edu/news/06/0613librarians.html). Those two are good examples of special curriculum and program that were tailored to the needs of Chinese librarians. These are also good examples of international collaboration on library leadership training and development.

With accelerated globalization and the needs of developing future library leaders with global literacy, a special component of cross-cultural training needs to be added into LDP’s curriculum and program design. The international collaboration on LDP may be a feasible and effective way to address this issue.

V. Future Library and Information Services Leaders

1. The emerging demand of developing future library leaders

Librarianship as a profession has entered an area where its workforce is aging and its leadership is becoming more “graying”. Fifty-eight percent of librarians in the U.S. are projected to reach the retirement age of 65 between 2005 and 2019 and forty per cent of library directors plan to retire in less than nine years (Source: Department for Professional Employees, AFL-CIO, “Fact Sheet 2005”: http://www.dpeaflcio.org/programs/factsheets/archived/fs_2005_library_workers.htm). Librarians, as a group, are much older than those in comparable professions. Moreover, they are also aging much faster. Currently, only 12 percent of librarians are in the age range of 25-34, while the percentage in other professions is only about one fourth (Lenzini, 2002).

There is also an international trend of “graying”. In Australia, over 52% of librarians are currently more than 45 years old. If they will retire at the age of 60, then about half of the population of Australian librarians are expected to retire within the next 10 to 15 years. (Hutley & Solomons, 2004).

In the next 15-20 years, libraries will experience a loss of a large number of professional workers, including leaders. Library leadership development becomes very important to ensure a new cohort of leaders, especially leaders with global vision ready to take over. Leadership development programs that focus on recruiting diverse backgrounds and ethnicities will be in high demand. Librarians, as a profession, are forced to choose a strategically important decision on succession management.

2. Traits of future library leaders

In the emerging global library environment, library leaders must demonstrate not only all those conventional leadership qualities, but also be injected with new dimensions of leadership qualities that focus on cross-cultural management.

Successful library leaders will need to demonstrate “a blend of bold leadership, informed risk taking, widespread consultation, and consensus building. They will need keen analytical powers, abundant common sense, vibrant creativity, reasoned judgment, and a passionate commitment to the mission and goals of higher education.” (Metz, 2001, p.3)

Recent researches in library leadership development summarized some key leadership traits or qualities for leaders in different library settings. Table 6 lists key selective traits for ARL (Association of Research Libraries) Directors.

Cross-cultural management is more personal and relationship-oriented than mono-cultural management. Leaders in cross-cultural management settings are required to adopt various approaches in order to deal with multiple cultures. Leaders who are skilled only in mono-cultural management will not succeed in today’s global multi-cultural environment. Without a proper understanding of cultural norms, leaders can make fatal and embarrassing social mistakes while trying to manage their multi-cultural workforce.

Traditional leadership development does not emphasize on traits in cross-cultural management. New sets of leadership traits that focus on cross-cultural management are urgently needed to be developed in order to train new leaders with the cross-cultural management ability.

The key component of cross-cultural management qualities is the global literacy. “To be globally literate means seeing, thinking, acting, and mobilizing in culturally mindful ways” (Rosen & Digh, 2002, http://www1.sim.edu.sg/sim/pub/mag/sim_pub_mag_list.cfm?ID=961).

VI. Conclusion

Globalization is an inevitable trend in all industries. The globalization tide brings great impact on libraries and librarians. This paper introduces the new concept of the Global Library and describes its key characteristics and advantages as well as disadvantages. The authors believe that the ending of local library is inevitable, as more and more libraries are joining the global cooperation and collaboration in sharing collections, services and human talents. The Global Library will emerge as an effective model for future libraries around the world.

To be a successful leader in a global library environment, Cultural Intelligence (CQ) is very critical. One needs to manage employees with diverse cultural backgrounds and serves patrons from various cultures as well. CQ is an emerging and important leadership trait in cross-cultural management. The abilities to persistently adapt to diverse cultures and different ways of thinking and the skills to take the right responses in cross-cultural interpersonal and organizational relationships are prerequisites to successful global leadership.

Leadership, as a subject, has been neglected in the library field until 1980s. As the library leaders are graying, libraries are facing an urgent need to educate and develop future library leaders. In the globalization age, library leadership development needs to add new dimensions such as CQ in cross-cultural management environment. In order to develop and train next generation of library leaders, libraries must either develop their leaders with global literary and high CQ or they need to select leaders with appropriate skills.

One of the effective ways to develop a leadership program in cross-cultural environment is to develop LDP via international collaboration. With more participants and facilitators coming from different countries and cultures, cross-cultural engagement and learning experience can be achieved effectively.

Globalization is everywhere. And the Global Library is emerging. It is time high time to seize this opportunity and take on such a challenge.

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