Introduction: Why the Research on Academic Libraries and Toxic Leadership?
Academic libraries are usually described as places for research and study, and rarely does academic literature, or even informal literature (such as professional blogs) acknowledge the possibility of dysfunction and toxicity in relationships between upper management of libraries, on the one hand, and librarians or other library support staff, on the other. The topic of toxic leadership in academic libraries has been an interest of mine since late 2005. Over the years, I have spent time speaking to academic librarian colleagues about adverse leadership in their libraries. I have spoken primarily with women, because over 82% of professional librarians are women (DPE Research Department, 2011).
Most of these academic librarians mentioned the occasional bully at a library, yet not necessarily in their own library. Some librarians did share information about more serious situations and used terms such as psychopaths, mean-games, and dysfunctional, among others, to describe the situations in which they worked or the people they were forced to work with. When asked what the library management (including Human Resources) was doing to address these issues, most were not aware of anything being done to ameliorate or end the abuse. In their experience, toxic leadership leading to a toxic environment was something almost everyone in academic libraries knows about, but it is not openly discussed. This anecdotal information is troubling and identified a phenomenon that can be observed in certain academic libraries.
It would be a few more years before a blog post addressing toxic leadership in libraries, by Abram (2011), candidly mentioned bullying in libraries:
This year, while working with librarians who are in the early stages of their career I was appalled to hear about some terrible (and often unaddressed) incidents of professional and workplace bullying by co-workers, management and users. Just scratch a group of library workers and the stories pour out.
With this blog post, anecdotal information, which up to then had been shared quietly among librarians, was now openly reported on social media. Abram (2011) concluded his blog entry with the following statement: “People should have grown up enough as adults that it shouldn’t happen – or at least bullying should be addressed properly in our field and workplaces.” It was this last phrase that confirmed that the research I desire to do was, indeed, warranted. There had been previous professional articles which at least hinted at toxic environments and toxic leadership in public libraries and special libraries (Proctor, 2001; Schachter, 2008), but there is a dearth of information about toxic leadership in academic libraries. Owing to their centrality to academic institutions and their unique context there is a need to comprehensively explore the topic of toxic leadership in academic libraries.
Aggression and bullying at work can be symptoms of a broader problem, the inability of library administrators to address behavior that is detrimental to the organization. Unscrupulous behaviors toward employees can create a toxic environment in any workplace. Several authors have addressed the connection between organizational leadership and cultures that foster bullying (Kellerman, 2004; Lipman-Blumen, 2005a; Reed, 2004; Whicker, 1996). The lack of research regarding dysfunctional and toxic environments in academic libraries and the scarcity of publications about how to be a good leader in libraries reveal that to better understand toxic behaviors, the structural causes that enable such behaviors need to be explored.
Toxic leadership is in every organization, including academic libraries, whether we would like to acknowledge it or not. Toxic leadership is a phenomenon that exists in contemporary organizations, resulting in an ineffective and less productive work environment (Frost, 2003; Kusy & Holloway, 2009; Lipman-Blumen, 2005a; Sutton, 2010). The prevalent lack of positive leadership that leads to poor workplace climates and cultures has led some researchers to assert that toxic leadership is a fact of organizational life (Frost, 2003; Kusy & Holloway, 2009).
Toxic leadership is frequently part and parcel of a constellation of more general characteristics of the contemporary workplace. Porath and Pearson (2013) concluded that “rudeness at work is rampant, and it’s on the rise” (p. 116). They documented that incivility issues have an effect on work output and quality of life in the United States and Canada; they recently noted, “Over the past 14 years we have polled thousands of workers about how they’re treated on the job, and 98% have reported experiencing uncivil behavior” (p. 116). These types of occurrences are not limited to corporate America; academic environments are not immune to insidious workplace behavior, workplace aggression, abusive supervision, relational aggression, incivility, intimidation and bullying, all of which are associated with toxic leadership (Dellasega, 2011; Lipman-Blumen, 2005a; Pelletier, 2010, 2012; Porath & Pearson, 2013; Reed, 2014; Schmidt, 2007, 2014; Spector & Rodopman, 2010; Sutton, 2010; Tepper, 2000).
Behaviors, such as aggression and bullying, which lead to a toxic workplace environment within the academy have only recently been discussed and documented in the academic literature, even though some scholars suggest these offenses have been on the rise for the past decade (Coyne, 2011; Fratzl & McKay, 2013; Keashly & Neuman, 2010; Klein & Lester, 2013; Twale & De Luca, 2008). A toxic environment leads to the loss of talented faculty members and a decline in productivity in those who remain and are affected emotionally, psychologically and/or physically (Brouwer, Koopmanschap, & Rutten, 1997; Klein & Lester, 2013; Organ, 1997; Tracy, Lutgen-Sandvik, & Alberts, 2006). Academic libraries are a specific type of higher education setting, yet their work environments have received little attention and the role that leadership plays in creating and sustaining productive and unproductive conditions has been virtually ignored.
Part of the research data used to write this book came from a national online survey that was administered over a period of 6 weeks on professional academic librarians’ lists in the United States and abroad, as well as follow-up survey interviews and in-depth interviews for this book. This book documents academic librarians who had to work with a toxic leader or witnessed toxic leadership, and it also expands on the findings of the national study and aspires to open the conversation on toxic leadership, and leadership in general, in academic libraries.
Organization of This Book
Chapter 1: What is Leadership? What is Toxic Leadership? introduces the topic of leadership and mentions that in what little research has been done on library and information studies, leadership has been seen only as a positive event. Only recently have scholars in the field addressed the need to study the impact of negative leadership in academic libraries (Hernon & Pors, 2013). This has shown up in the guise of bad, incompetent, leadership with negative actions, but the term “toxic leadership” has yet to be used in the library and information studies field. The second half of the chapter presents a definition of “toxic leadership” from the author, based on the reported experiences of academic librarians as well as how it has been identified in the literature of leadership studies and library and information studies. Chapter 2: How to Acknowledge the Presence of Toxic Leadership discusses the effects of toxic leadership in organizations in general and then presents its effects on academic libraries and librarians as well as User Services.
In Chapter 3: What to Do about Toxic Leadership? information about the situation after toxic leadership has been recognized, and how to begin to counteract toxic leadership, is provided, including what steps to take when confronted with toxic leadership in the workplace. Who to talk to, and the consequences of inaction, are also discussed. Chapter 4: Regaining Control of the Library is about the difficult task—taking over your library. It must be done in order to improve morale and help those who are suffering the most. The chapter also discusses the important topic of maintaining a toxic leader-free library; because after the toxic leader/s (or immediate threat) has been removed (or isolated), the situation will not change for the better on its own. Unless mechanisms have been put in place to prevent the rise of another toxic leader, the situation that has just been resolved could arise again in the near future.
Chapter 5: The Healing Process for the Academic Library free of Toxic Leaders deals with the healing process, which varies from academic library to academic library, and is usually influenced by its parent institution. Many librarians reported seeking professional assistance from psychologists or career counselors to focus their energies in a positive direction, while still others began taking up old or new hobbies, to wean themselves from the destructive mechanisms they adopted to cope while they were working under a tyrant. The chapter also discusses residual toxicity, which can become an ongoing problem for some librarians if the healing process is not undertaken. Chapter 6: Cases illustrates how toxic leadership was experienced and handled at a variety of colleges and universities across the United States. Toxic leadership is present at all types of academic libraries and levels of administration, whether it be community colleges or prestigious, large, research-intensive universities.