AARL

Themes and sub-themes in managers' work

Diana Kingston

ABSTRACT: An academic library manager's job is characterised by the expression of various aspects of at least four core themes and other themes. The'other' themes include some which would be considered major themes in various contexts. The four core themes identified through this study are:

1. Relationships management,
2. Information management,
3. Physical infrastructure and materials management, and
4. Structure of work management.

The precise manifestation of these themes varies from situation to situation. It is suggested that the four core themes are interactive, often simultaneously occurring, components of any library manager's job. The four core themes are designated as manageal because in the broadest sense they appear to be characteristic of the managers' jobs generally. In other words, the expression of the four core themes is not confined to managerial jobs which are located at or near the apex of organisational structures. Taken together with personal themes (including cognitive and psychological work), this framework has potentially wide-ranging implications.

This article is derived from a study of five university library managers' jobs.[1] The study aimed within its scope and limitations to identify commonalities (and, inevitably, disparities) between the work of five managers whose jobs were overtly different in various ways, as summarised below. The researcher was trying in effect to elucidate concepts of work that might be termed manageal (that is, relevant to all management levels and types) not just managerial (that is, most relevant to senior management levels). This study produced a new paradigm of managers' work for discussion. Review, revision and updating of existing paradigms, which inform the work of educators and practitioners, are important as a matter of principle. Some implications of the current review are outlined at the end of this article.

The Cases

The five managers' jobs which were the subject of the study represented a diagonal cross-section of jobs within the university library sector. The cases were carefully chosen to provide representation of, for example, the size of unit managed, rank or level in the university's organisational hierarchy, potential for influence of incumbent in various industrial sectors and actual and potential weight of impact in human and financial terms.

The five incumbents were in charge of libraries with personnel establishments ranging from 142.4 EFT at site A, 71.9 EFT (site B), 28.3 EFT (site C), 12 EFT (site D) down to 1.2 EFT at site E (that is, including the manager). They were in charge of geographically distinct main or branch libraries in four universities. Thus, each manager had the type of autonomy afforded by a separate location on campus and was in a sense in a boundary-spanning position between the library and the university community served by the library.

At the two larger sites (A and B) the library managers were CEO's of the whole library organisation within their respective universities. At sites A and B, traditional 'managerial' or 'executive' level decision making, planning and human and financial resources management functions were included in the library manager's role. Clearly, however, the functional roles of the three branch library managers (sites C, D and E) in relation to their respective whole library organisations (that is, where someone else was the CEO), were different from those of the library managers at sites A and B. The inclusion of the smaller sites was not intended to suggest that the roles and activities of their library managers were 'managerial' in the more traditional sense. Nor was the researcher suggesting that library technical or processing operations were 'managerial' in the traditional sense.

At the heart of the study was recognition of the usefulness of contingency theory.[2] It is used to explain the great diversity in management, in that specific contexts, situations and environments influence management and vice versa. Each of the five libraries in the present study was very different from the others in terms of the size of its personnel establishment and other features. Therefore the assumption was that findings of commonalities between the jobs of the five library managers would be of potential significance.

Methodology

A detailed discussion of the study's methodology is available in the original report.[3] The researcher essentially observed the five managers' actions and coded these into detailed categories of work which were analysed statistically into top ranking categories in three general areas. These areas consisted of contact activity, general patterns of work and the management of resources and materials. The original study would be categorised in research terms as a comparative multi-case study which included a cross-case quantitative analysis along eleven variables.[4] Some of the eleven variables (to which the data categories refer) were derived from Mintzberg's classic study of five CEO's.[5]

On balance, this research study was concerned with the job of the manager rather than the person doing the job and with what the job brought to the manager, rather than what the manager brought to the job. Nevertheless, it was accepted that these two factors were and are not necessarily independent of each other (see Figure 1 and Figure 2). Studies which focus on the person in the job rather than on a job per se might identify core behaviours which the present researcher did not aim to study as such, for example, thought processes. The managers' cognitive functioning was of course one aspect of the library managers' work which was all pervasive and therefore embedded in the data collected. This matter is discussed later in the article (see Conclusions).

Figure 2
Themes in Manager's Job
(What the Job brings to the Manager)

Figure 2
The Individual Manager at the Centre
(What the Manager brings to the Job)
It is noted that the field data were collected on sampled days while the managers were at work on campus. There were practical limitations on the researcher's access to the managers at other times. Thus, other work, for example on documents taken home of an evening, was not included in the study. The researcher's institution, University of Sydney, was not involved in the study (for which the data were collected in the mid-1990s).

Along a continuum ranging from a macro- to a micro-view of the manager's job, the field data in the study were collected towards the 'micro' end of the continuum through structured and unstructured field observation techniques. In this article, the author steps back from the study's detailed field data and quantitative results. This article takes a synthesising and more macro-oriented view. This distillation is based on a reconsideration of Mintzberg's managerial roles in the light of the results of the research project and also of various cognitive and psychological management work concepts.

Four core themes relevant to all management levels emerged from this review. Addition of a 'Personal' work theme (including cognitive and psychological work) would constitute a set of five guiding themes.

Four Core Themes (RIPS)

The four core overlapping and intertwined core job themes identified are:

1. Relationships Management
2. Information Management
3. Physical Infrastructure and Materials Management
4. Structure of Work Management

RIPS
The commonalities between the five manager's jobs may be expressed as a core set of major themes which includes four general inter-woven themes (RIPS). RIPS themes may be said to be comprised of various Sub-themes. Further, major added themes (MAT) which are important, even central or 'core' at some but not all sites, should be accounted for in some way. Figure 1 expresses this scheme.

In reality, the four RIPS themes are interactive, often simultaneous, and almost indivisible parts of a whole. Although four themes were found through the focus or perspective taken in this study, the possibility of more than four core themes is not of course dismissed. It is stressed that these are general themes. Their precise expression or manifestation will vary from situation to situation, and from incident to incident. The term 'management' in the above list of themes is used in an extended sense to cover both positive and negative processes and activities along a continuum from (a) acquisition and creation, (b) to maintenance and enhancement and through to (c) discarding and destruction of aspects of relationships, information, physical infrastructure and materials and the structure of work.

RIPS Sub-Themes
The four core elements are general themes, which are composed of various sub-themes, or groups of sub-themes, some of which might be special to, or be emphasized more, in one particular job rather than another. For example, within the theme of relationships management, a sub-theme comprised of 'human resources' matters was found to be prominent at the four larger sites in terms of time expended in a particular resource area, whereas another sub-theme of 'client/user services' was prominent at the smallest site.

Major Added Themes (MAT)
From a 'manageal' perspective, the study also identified 'Major additional management themes', and their groups of sub-themes, which are not included in the RIPS core scheme. The reason for the distinction between RIPS and MAT is major contingency (situational) differences between the jobs. There may be major themes relevant to some jobs, but not others (that is, some which are not represented by the RIPS core). In the general paradigm this would hold even though at various local institutions they may be considered 'core' due to the local context. For example, in this study, the MAT of financial resources management was recorded at the three larger sites, barely recorded at the second smallest site and not at all at the smallest site. In another industrial sector, for example, major added themes may include legal issues.

Summary
It would be possible to discuss the particular expression of or phenomena involved in each theme and sub-theme in terms of, for example:

• major types of RIPS and MAT
• processes involved (including social and technical processes)
• purposes of these
• qualities and characteristics of these
• inputs and outcomes.

Relationships Management
It should be stressed that the term 'relationships management' is used here in a very generic sense to cover all types of relationships. Thus, the phrase 'relationships management' is intended to cover a range of different types of relationships including, for example, one-to-one interpersonal relationships, collective relationships and formalised inter-organisational relationships. It is also used in a 'neutral' sense, so as to cover both positive and negative aspects of relationships.

In the study, the relationships management core theme was found to be relevant in various ways to library user services, also intra- and inter- organisational parties as the focus of the library manager's attention, and human resources management. In the study, at all sites few work segments were coded as having no party associated with them. Overall the managers as a group were part of a complex network with different types of contact parties. Studies of each of the eight groups of parties identified could be conceived as studies of sub-themes. For example, clients (library users) and their service emerges as a one possible sub-theme, subordinates and their management as another.

At the four largest sites (A through D), the library manager's own subordinates were coded as the group most in real-time contact with the library manager. At the smallest site (E), most real-time contact was with clients, particularly academics. Human resources management occupied between 31.5% of time (site C) and 10.6% (site E). As a group, the managers were required to be competent in various modes of contact, both direct (face-to-face, via the telephone, in meetings, in classes and in reference interviews) and less direct (mail in various physical forms: paper documents, electronic documents and parcels).

The conclusion is that managers in library organisations must have a wide range of communication and interpersonal skills. In the public user/client services area this includes sets of skills required for effective interviewing (for example at the inquiry desk), preparation and presentation of information literacy (reader education) classes, borrower management and the client interface in general. In dealing with parties of influence internal and external to the home university, communication skills which are relevant relate to the effective presentation of information, review and argument, promotion and persuasion. Further, the raft of communication and interpersonal skills required for the management of subordinates is clearly required.

Within the relationships management core theme, possible sub-themes (or possibly groups of sub-themes) which merit further study include the:

• purposes of relationships
• parties involved in relationships
• processes used in creating, maintaining and dissolving relationships
• characteristics, properties or qualities of relationships.

Information Management
Information management emerged as a second RIPS core theme from the study. The phrase 'information management' is used here in a very generic sense so as to be an all-inclusive term. That is, it is intended to cover the full spectrum of verbal and non-verbal, recorded and unrecorded information which is employed consciously or unconsciously by managers in the course of their work (see for example, Galvin et al[6]). This of course includes live conversations and presentations of various kinds. The information might be ephemeral, current, non-current and archived. In the study, the information managed by each individual manager was extremely varied in nature.

Information management might be discussed in terms of various sub-themes. For example, a sub-theme of 'information user type' might be articulated. Information may be composed of 'organisational' (office), 'public client' and/or 'common' information. An example of the latter would be the information accessible in a library system which is used both by personnel within the library organisation for operational purposes and also by library service users.

Purpose of use is another possible sub-theme (or group of sub-themes). Clearly relationships management depends amongst other factors on the acquisition, transfer, sharing and withholding of information. The connection between the first and second RIPS themes is therefore very strong.

Information could also be analysed into sub-themes by informational or literary (as opposed to physical) form. The top scoring information form at the four largest sites in the study was a group labelled 'plans' which covered a diverse range of forms including budgets, agendas, policies, standard operating procedures and rules and regulations. This is the sense in which Aldag and Stearns use the term 'plans'.[7] At site E most time was expended on traditional library materials (printed monographs and serials). The informational forms covered a wide range from requests and inquiries of various kinds to advertisements, from miscellaneous documents and messages to operational reviews and reports.

In the library and information management (LIM) field, information management is already a core theme with a focus towards management of information to facilitate its use by a service client or customer. The present study pointed to the need for a broader perspective which includes office and organisational information management by the (academic) library manager. Office and organisational information management is used here in a very broad sense, not limited as to particular media or time-frame, nor to more formal concepts such as 'management information systems',[8] but embracing all of these within its scope.

Physical Infrastructure and Materials Management

This theme includes physical infrastructure, site planning and technology. In so far as technology incorporates both information and materials, there is an overlap between the second and third themes. There is in any case a strong link between the second and third RIPS core themes regarding information because information and its physical carriers are closely related topics.

In this third RIPS core theme, physical materials handling is included. 'Physical materials' includes equipment and hardware. In the study, of the materials handled information materials top scored over other materials. This is probably to be expected in a LIM organisation. In other industries the materials handled could predominantly include quite different items or forms of equipment and hardware.

Not surprisingly, the study provided evidence that managers in library organisations must be competent to varying degrees in dealing with a wide range of physical forms of information materials (both paper-based and electronic). Information technology (that is electronic information technology) is an increasingly important LIM sub-theme. Again, the study contributes an awareness of the need to blend or incorporate both office and client information materials into management education, training and development.

Structure of Work Management
Studies have consistently shown management activities to be social, dynamic and fragmented (see for example: Auret,[9] Kurke and Aldrich,[10] Mintzberg,[11] Stewart[12]). The present study upheld this picture and also strongly revealed the extent of continuity, discontinuity, and sequential and parallel tasking in the managers' jobs. The present researcher formed the view that taken together such aspects of work are sub-themes of a core theme which is the form or 'structure' of work with which managers are presented. This structure must be managed as an integral part of the manager's job. It is not a side issue but a central feature of management and therefore belongs in the core content of the manager's job. Management of work structure includes taking advantage of interruptions if they present opportunities, minimising disadvantageous timing demands, prioritising, keeping track of several matters simultaneously over time and so on.

In the study, at all sites the managers tended to work mostly, but by no means exclusively, in the office where their own desk was located. In real time, they tended mostly to work alone or with one other person. Their work could be described in terms of work segments, most of which were linked to at least one other work segment and sometimes to many. Most work segments were very short in duration, the commonest duration being between one and two minutes. Most work segments involved contact of some type between the manager and another party (for example, by e-mail and other mail, telephone, fax or in a face-to-face context). It would appear that to varying degrees the structure of work is in part both imposed by the situation or the job itself and also contributed to or created by the incumbent (the manager).

Most work segments in the study were less than 15 minutes in duration. The proportion of work segments lasting 15 minutes or more was very small (in the range of 2.2% at site A to 0.3% at site E). Some of the longer work segments involved scheduled meetings.

There was evidence of parallel tasking and a need to deal with continuity and discontinuity as a structural reality of work. A task might be interrupted for various reasons, either by the library manager, by the presence or absence of another person, by circumstances or by procedures. It might be merely that the library manager placed a document on hold for further reading as time permitted. On the other hand, continuity might have been represented by progress in dealing with a major or minor issue of the day, the resumption of a task following an interruption or preparation for a meeting.

In general the study supported Stewart's summary of similarities in management work.[13] In particular, these include the findings that for a high proportion of time the manager (a) spends time in contact with other people and (b) switches attention rapidly from one person and one subject to another. The researcher also found support for two points noted by Martinko and Gardner[14] to the effect that while most studies show managerial work as fragmented and varied, at the same time managers are fairly systematic and control their time well. The study found that this applied to 'senior,' more 'managerial level' managers through to the 'lower status' managers at work.

At all sites, analysis of the field data involving linked work segments revealed that sometimes specific matters, themes or topics tended to dominate or persist through a particular working day. The study thus suggested that the composition of a RIPS core theme of structure of work management might contain sub-themes such as the management of:

• task discontinuity and interruption
• sustaining continuity (linkage of work segments) and parallel tasking
• time management
• prioritisation of work
• location of work
• work scenarios/situations (Mintzberg 'media').

Discussion
Mintzberg Studies: From Roles to Themes
There has been a large number of studies that attempt to replicate, refine and extend the ten managerial roles identified by Mintzberg.[15] The present study falls within that general tradition in terms of methods of data collection. However, the focus of the data analysis in the present study (that is, a focus on what was being managed by a diagonal cross-section of managers), evolved into an paradigm of work themes rather than Roles. Mintzberg's role typology proposed three groupings of these ten roles: Interpersonal, Informational and Decisional. However, Mintzberg himself remarked: 'At best, role is a fuzzy concept.'[16]

Relationships
As mentioned above, the present study did not consider 'role' specifically. However, the results suggest that the adjective 'Interpersonal' might, at least in the late 1990s and early 2000s, be a somewhat narrower description than is useful. Mintzberg used it to group the figurehead, leader and liaison roles. Instead, a broader concept or more integrating core Theme of 'Relationships management' is proposed.

Information Management
In general terms, the second core Theme of 'Information management' aligns somewhat with Mintzberg's proposed 'Informational' group of roles (composed of the monitor, disseminator and spokesman roles), but it is intended to be a more integrating concept with a wider connotation.

Cognitive Work
Mintzberg's 'Decisional' group of roles contains descriptions which would be covered by the theme of 'Relationships management' outlined earlier in this article. For example, this would apply to some of Mintzberg's 'negotiator' and 'disturbance handler' functions. On the other hand, some 'resource allocator' functions from this 'decisional' role group would become distributed to various RIPS and MAT theme groups in the current paradigm. For example, 'human resources' management fits within the relationships management theme and 'financial resources' within the MAT theme group.

The issue of decisional functions merges into that of cognitive functions which in the present study were acknowledged broadly to underpin all of the manager's work but were not specifically a focus of the observations. By comparison with the 1970s, the study of decision-making has from the early 1990s tended to be included under the umbrella of a strand of management studies which is generally labelled 'cognitive' management studies. For example, the Academy of Management has a Managerial and Organizational Cognition Interest Group whose domain is the:

study of how organization members model reality and how such models interact with behaviors. Major topics include: attention, attribution, decision making, ideology, information processing, learning, memory, mental representations and images, perceptual and interpretive processes, social construction, and symbols.[17]

Schneider and Angelmar pointed out that research on cognition in organisations had focused on individual managers and how they think while performing a variety of managerial tasks.[18] They proposed a framework of cognition that could be applied to the individual, group and organisational levels of analysis. Again, the manager's job from the viewpoint of an individual incumbent might be expressed by adding an inner circle to Figure 1 which might represent the manager's cognitive/psychosocial and personal activity.

Structure of Work

In his 'comprehensive description of managerial work' Mintzberg wrote as follows:

The manager's activities are characterized by brevity, variety, and fragmentation. The vast majority are of brief duration, on the order of... minutes for chief executives. A great variety of activities are performed, but with no obvious patterns. The trivial are interspersed with the consequential so that the manager must shift moods quickly and frequently. There is great fragmentation of work, and interruptions are commonplace.

Although the present study defined an 'activity' differently from Mintzberg and others (that is, as a 'work segment'), the findings for the library managers' on campus work agreed with the description of brevity and fragmentation and also with the observation that trivial activities are interspersed with the consequential. Through detailed units of observation and analysis based on work segments (and facilitated by SPSS statistical software) patterns and links were found to exist despite the brevity and fragmentation. The studies agree that interruptions were commonplace. It is noted in the present study that they were not necessarily unwelcome nor considered disadvantageous.

It should be re-iterated that the themes and sub-themes outlined in this paper relate to the managers' work as observed in a particular field study of five university library managers. There may be other core themes and important additional themes besides those mentioned here. The main message of this article is that a particular manager's job may be said to be characterised by the expression of various aspects of the four general and other themes within the context of a particular situation.

Some Implications
This article has outlined a paradigm of manageal themes and sub-themes which is supported by the quantitative (statistical) results of the author's research. This could provide a useful framework to facilitate auditing and review of current and future programs within the library and information management sector generally and also within particular organisations and institutions. Both educational and operational programs may benefit from use of the framework for auditing and planning purposes.

Any systematic articulation of detailed content associated with this framework would almost certainly require the establishment of a follow-up project. Such a project would involve work in several areas across and within the themes, vertically and horizontally. The project could commence with the extraction and appropriation of relevant qualitative (descriptive) information from:

• research data in the management and LIM literature (including descriptive material derived from the present research study)
• educational sources (staff development and continuing professional development)
• consultation with experienced practitioners and educators in various LIM sectors.

It is stressed again that the themes are interactive and intertwining. Thus, classification and mapping, followed by labelling or tagging of items of content using the themes framework, could indicate relevance to several themes.

The study has potentially wide-ranging implications at various macro- and micro- levels within the library and information management field. Since they are wide-ranging, there is scope for progress to be made cooperatively by individuals and groups. Contributors to the work could represent individual libraries and individual employees, groups and organisations such as CAUL, ALIA and AIMA.

For example, a framework or model of themes and sub-themes which reside within two major groupings (1) RIPS and (2) MAT as outlined in this article, may provide a mechanism for discussing, comparing and contrasting various jobs within an organisation and in different organisations. From an organisational point of view, a job is normally an establishment position with a job description which specifies duties and responsibilities, together with any prerequisite qualifications, experience and skills requirements involved. It would be interesting to investigate how useful the RIPS/MAT model would be for job analysis, design and description. It may make a useful contribution to the specification of core duties, responsibilities and requirements.

Further, the study provided evidence that 'manageal' strands of work are normally required of incumbents who are located relatively low in the organizational hierarchy right through to CEOs. This of course has implications for staff development, for example, the need to redefine the constituency which would benefit from various training and development initiatives. Eventually, the study's implications may usefully feed back into the general management studies field.

Notes

1. D E Kingston Academic Library Managers at Work: An Analysis of Five Cases PhD Thesis University of New South Wales 1999

2. J T Kim 'Management, Contingency' in J.M. Shafritz (ed) International Encyclopedia of Public Policy and Administration Boulder Westview 1998 pp1344-8

3. D E Kingston op cit

4. R K Yin Case Study Research: Design and methods 2nd ed Thousand Oaks CA Sage 1994 pp44-51, 135

5. H Mintzberg The Nature of Managerial Work New York Harper & Row 1973

6. M Galvin D Prescott and R Huseman Business communication: Strategies and Skills 4th ed Sydney Holt Rinehart and Winston 1992 pp8-9

7. R J Aldag and T M Stearns Management 2nd ed Cincinatti South-Western 1991 pp169-76

8. G Tozer Metadata Management for Information Control and Business Success Boston Artech House 1999 pp3-19; R T Watson Data Management: Databases and Organizations 2nd ed New York Wiley 1999 pp33-59

9. H E Auret Managerial Role Behaviour of University Library Directors PhD Thesis University of Pretoria 1995

10. L B Kurke and H E Aldrich 'Mintzberg was Right!: A Replication and Extension of the Nature of Managerial Work' Management Science vol 29 no 8 1983 pp975-984

11. H Mintzberg op cit

12. R Stewart The Reality of Management 3rd ed Oxford Butterworth-Heinemann 1997

13. Ibid pp7-9

14. M J Martinko and W L Gardiner 'Structured Observation of Managerial Work: A Replication and Synthesis' Journal of Management Studies vol 27 no 3 1990 p330

15. H Mintzberg op cit p59

16. Ibid p266

17. Academy of Management Handbook Ada OH Business Manager Academy of Management Publications 1992 p22

18. S C Schneider and R Angelmar 'Cognition in Organizational Analysis: Who's Minding the Store?' Organization Studies vol 14 no 3 1993 pp347-373

Diana Kingston, dentistry librarian, University of Sydney, Sydney NSW 2006 Australia. E-mail: d.kingston@library.usyd.edu.au.nospam (please remove the '.nospam' from the address).