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Leadership development is a significant issue in public libraries and library administrators debate, among other topics, how to achieve it for the middle-level manager. At the present time, library organizations use leadership and management workshops, seminars, and institutes to assist with managers’ organizational learning processes. Current literature indicates that additional strategies such as career planning, mentoring, networking, acquiring adequate qualifications and experience, professional involvement, and continuing education are used not only to facilitate middle-level managers’ career development, but also to help organizations fill the leadership gaps within their ranks.

The aim of this chapter is to help library managers and administrators understand the core processes of project management and how adopting a project management mindset as an approach to library administration can help libraries more efficiently achieve the goals and objectives outlined in their strategic plans and to simultaneously grow library leaders, at all levels of the organization.

The chapter is a combination of general overview, literature review, and conceptual paper. It will begin by discussing the basics of project management and project management processes, the shell, that makes project management such a valuable management tool to help guide staff through work processes. Next will be sections focusing on core literature resources for further understanding the value of project management and the project management mindset, both from the library and non-library literature. Relevant library literature presented will highlight the portions of the literature that tie to the core project management process and its value as a managerial, strategic planning, and leadership building tool. This will be followed by a slightly more in-depth examination of project management processes, followed by a section detailing the practical benefits to libraries. The chapter will end by summarizing the benefits of utilizing project management as a managerial tool and ties into the overall concept of employing a Project Management Mindset as one’s approach to management or administration.

Practical implications to embracing a Project Management Mindset in libraries include improving efficiency, realizing goals and objectives tied to strategic plans, and building staff knowledge, skills, and leadership abilities. The ideas gleaned from this chapter can be applied in any library type: academic, public, special, or school.

Library literature related to project management is solid, but generally focuses on processes and tools, and often has an IT focus. This chapter fills a gap in literature geared specifically to managers and administrators and focuses less on specifics and more on the higher-level benefits organizations such as libraries can gain from project management as well as the benefits to the library profession as a whole by increasing employee skills, knowledge, and leadership.

This chapter explores the results of an international survey (RAAAP-2) to provide global insight into research management and administration (RMA) as a relatively new field of investigation within the area of higher education management (HEM). Building on that extensive survey, the purpose of this chapter is to investigate qualitatively how and why people become and remain research managers and administrators, focussing primarily on their skills, roles, and career paths.

Findings from the analysis confirm that a career in RMA is rarely an intentional choice and can be described as labyrinthine, which could be even compared and contrasted with a concertine academic career described by Whitchurch et al. (2021). While conclusions confirm the gender implications of the profession, which is overall highly ‘female’; further conclusion sheds light on RMAs across regions and suggests how this varied ecosystem could even undermine the recognition of RMA as a profession.

Starting in the late 1950s with the creation of the National Council of University Research Administrators (NCURA), followed by the formation of other professional organisations both in the USA and Europe, there was a growing sense that research management was indeed a profession. One goal was the creation of professional standards that would lead to a standard training curriculum and, ultimately, a professional credential, and there have been many attempts at developing research administration certification. Now, in the US, accreditation through the Research Administrators Certification Council (RACC) exam has become ubiquitous, whereas in other parts of the world, certification by portfolio is more common. This chapter will compare and contrast the salient features of certification, certificates, and degree programs in research administration and review their development and growth over the past 30 years. The chapter will discuss their relative merits and how they work to advance the profession of research administration.

For the last decade, policy makers and boards of education have been mandating and searching for school leaders who are knowledgeable about curriculum and instruction or what the reform literature terms instructional leadership. The recognition that expertise in teaching and learning is critical to the achievement in our schools, however, has often been overwhelmed by the management functions of administration and programs in educational administration, which continue to support the role of manager, and provides little, if any, substance for the kinds of knowledge and skills necessary to lead a school instructionally. Recent studies of the instructional leadership contend that the content that has been neglected in the training of administrators is an understanding of subject matter and how an educational leader must transform the theories, ideas, and practices of a subject or discipline into the everyday understandings of classroom teaching. Although the new construct of Leadership Content Knowledge (LDK) provides a new understanding about what leaders need to know about teaching and learning in order to effectively perform the role of instructional leader, the studies of LDK have not yet provided a process for becoming a leader of content knowledge. The author describes a framework for how an educational administrator would become a “Leader of Content Knowledge.”

The International Network of Research Management Societies (INORMS) celebrated its 20^th anniversary in 2021. It was established to increase communication among research management societies. The need for a formal international research management community developed because there was (1) increased international funding of research, (2) the number of international research collaborations was growing, and (3) there was a need to understand research regulations in other countries. INORMS sought to address these issues through international congresses and by providing a forum for member societies to work more closely together on common issues. Membership in INORMS steadily increased over the years. The 20^th anniversary meeting was highlighted with the signing of the Hiroshima Statement that described a research manager’s principles and responsibilities, which include collegiality, inclusiveness, professionalisation, innovation, and accountability. This chapter summarises the factors that led to the formation of INORMS and its history.

This chapter compares research management and administration (RMA) associations worldwide and the existing professional development frameworks (PDFs) for RMAs. The comparison is based on a study of 22 national, European Union (EU), and international RMA associations/networks which was carried out between April and June 2020 and revised in 2022; it aims at providing a comprehensive overview of skills and competences of RMAs as a profession to enable worldwide benchmarking and analysis.

The benchmarking analysis could provide useful information for those working on the development of professional frameworks training targeted at RMAs, or the recognition of RMA as a profession.