ANTECEDENTS OF STRATEGIC THINKING AMONG ACADEMIC LIBRARIANS IN DRIVING INNOVATION AND LEADING CHANGE

Abstract

This exploratory case study intends to identify the antecedents of strategic thinking from the insights of librarians and its practice in Malaysian research universities. This study will analyse output derived from demonstrating strategic thinking ability among librarians, including evidence of the success of innovative projects and services initiated by university libraries. This will be useful to validate that innovativeness endeavours are highly encouraged in academic librarians’ workplaces. Strategic thinking leading to innovative behaviours is calculated as a parameter in measuring academic librarians’ job performance. To meet the objectives, focus group interviews were first conducted with ten informants among academic librarians in order to discover their conceptions, beliefs and perceptions regarding antecedents and inhibitors of strategic thinking, within the universities under study. Then, document analyses were used to check and analyse the parent organization visions with regard to innovativeness and librarians’ strategic thinking behaviours. This included official library innovation documents and librarian job specifications. The data collection methods provided significant evidence to show that the Malaysian universities’ academic libraries are dynamic, as strategic thinking and innovative behaviours take place to a certain extent with incremental award-winning innovations. This paper is considered a new extension and in-depth study in discovering the strategic thinking ability and has implications for innovative behaviour among Malaysia’s librarians.