Coping with Change, Managing Uncertainty Essay -- essays research pape

make do with Change, Managing Uncertainty Introduction Thirty years agone most people thought that change would mean more of the same, scarce better. That was additive change and to be welcomed. Today we know that in many an(prenominal) areas of life we cannot guarantee more of the same...we cannot even predict with confidence what depart be happening in our own lives. (Handy, 1991) He differentiates between additive and discontinuous change, suggesting that the combination of economics and technology form a potent shading in this. We can see that Higher Education (HE) depository library and cultivation Services (LIS), are part of an environment which is subject to both incremental and discontinuous change Political - increased control from central giving medication Sociological - the information age Educational - the mass HE strategy Technological - networking, computing and telecommunications Organisational - new structures Economic - increased demand for set for money C ultural - changed norms and values In LIS the move from holdings of information sources in-house to electronic access to remote sources, along with the pressure to provide more function with fewer human and financial resources brings its own kind of change spick-and-span structures such as team-working Collaboration with a range of different groups and individuals additional skills for staff and users Increased management and decision-making Heavier workloads LIS managers and their staff need to adopt verificatory strategies to cope with these changes Library administrators must become facilitators. They must understand how the world is ever-changing and how the library must change. And they must also learn to be know at persuasion, since wherever there is change there will be resistance. (Moore, 1995) Coping with change rests on two struts understanding change and managing change. Coping with change understanding Practical steps can be interpreted to increase knowledge and un derstanding SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) analysis TQM (Total Quality Management) exercises assembly planning exercises Programmes of visiting speakers Training needs analysis Environmental scan Electronic discussion lists User surveys Internal staff surveys Away years External seminars, conferences and workshops Shared experience sessions Understanding uncertainty Information technology is ve... .... Mowat (eds). Networking and the afterlife of libraries managing the intellectual record. UKOLN and LA. Corrall, S. (1995 b) Academic libraries in the information society. New Library World, 96 (1120), 35-42. Garvin, D.A. (1994) Building a learning organisation. Business Credit New York, 96 (1), 19. Handy, C. (1991) The Age of Unreason. In Henry, Jane (ed) Creative Management. Sage Publications, 269-282. Majaro, S. (1988) The Creative Gap. London, Longman. Moore, M. (1995) Impact of the changing environment on academic library administration conflicts, inco ngruities, contradictions and dichotomies. Journal of Library Administration, 22 (1), 13-36. Morgan, G. (1991) Emerging waves and challenges. In Henry, Jane (ed). Creative Management. Sage Publications, 283-293. Riggs, D. (1997) Whats in butt in for academic libraries? Leadership and management issues. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 23 (1). 3-8. Walton, G. and Edwards, C. (1997) strategical management of the electronic library in the UK higher education area implications of eLibs IMPEL2 project at the University of Northumbria at Newcastle. In Raitt, D. (ed) Libraries for the New Millennium, 169-198.