Public management means strategic management: How can libraries fulfil the requirements of the new public management?

Abstract

Purpose

The New Public Management creates new tasks and challenges for libraries. They have to change from input‐ to output‐management, to develop a strategy, to operationalize this strategy and find key performance indicators to see if the strategic goals are reached or if actions or the strategy itself need to be changed. This paper aims to give one example how these new specifications can be accomplished.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper describes the strategy adopted which utilises the balanced scorecard (BSC).

Finding

The most important results of this research are that an organizational culture based on trust correlates significantly with the use of the balanced scorecard and accounts for 28 per cent of the use of the BSC as a strategic management system. Also, the transformational as well as the transactional leadership affect the culture based on trust. Transformational leadership accounts for 19.1 per cent and transactional leadership accounts for 16.9 per cent of the organizational culture

Originality/value

The German National Library of Science and Technology (TIB)‐BSC example described in the paper shows that the balanced scorecard is a possible strategic management system for libraries.

Citation

Düren, P. (2010), "Public management means strategic management: How can libraries fulfil the requirements of the new public management?", Library Management, Vol. 31 No. 3, pp. 162-168. https://doi.org/10.1108/01435121011027336