Change Management in Information Services 2nd edition

Citation

Hannabuss, S. (2007), "Change Management in Information Services 2nd edition", Library Review, Vol. 56 No. 8, pp. 743-744. https://doi.org/10.1108/00242530710818135

This is the second edition (the first was published by Gower, Ashgate's fellow‐imprint, in 2000) of this well‐established textbook. Like the first, the second will be of particular value and relevance where change management is taught above all to students of information and library studies. It will also provide a wide range of sensible background information on the theory of change management, and related topics like organizational structures and cultures, leadership, teams and motivation, to anyone – employer or employee or trainer – considering it for reading on a course of continuing professional development.

The emphasis of the book is on the generic issues associated with change management and on those specific implications for and applications in information and library services. By that token, Pugh takes the reader through the nature of change and change theories, on to process and models and metaphors for organizations. He then switches to structures, helping us to see how traditional hierarchical structures constrain change management, and then on to teams and leadership in change management. He concludes with the psychology of change and what skills are needed, by both leaders and practitioners more generally, in dealing with change.

It is a good book of its type, keeping its eye on the ball so that information and library issues never get lost in more generic discussion, ensuring that topics like leadership and teams do not take over in their own right (the over‐arching theme of change shapes what Pugh says about them), and capturing numerous appropriate citations in a topical and helpful bibliography. Pugh teaches management in the Department of Information Studies at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth and currently edits the journal Multimedia Information and Technology.

This background shows in his approach, targeted clearly at people who want an overview of change management as it applies to and in information and library services today. He provides several case studies, anonymized and probably created plausibly, which demonstrate the ideas – like putting theory into practice – though something like this could have been provided for every chapter. For teams, something other than the Red Arrow Royal Air Force aerobatics team could and should have been developed, given that teams, like leadership, lie at the heart of things. Given, too, that leadership seems to be in such short supply, however much everyone seems to know what it is (vision, trust, empathy, transparency, etc.), some hard‐nosed examples of that, in the context of change, would be welcome.

It is a book, then, which opens up the ground, alerts newbies and reminds wonks of the principles and topical debate about change, and is able, through its bibliography even more than its case studies, to signpost readers to actual implementation. To root it even more firmly in the information and library field, and to help detach it from the common‐sense‐on‐stilts of a lot of change management speak, I look forward to what will almost certainly be another highly competent third edition in due course when Pugh will, I hope, put more of his money where his mouth is. One place where this would work well is where informal networks are said to play a key part in change, another would be where teams have done this, and a third would be where leaders put all the skills Pugh notes into action, and things emerge “with all faults”. It is all a little too perfect (and perfectibilarian) for me.