New public management and libraries: a success story or just an excuse for cost reduction
| Published date | 14 November 2017 |
| Pages | 477-487 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/LM-01-2017-0005 |
| Date | 14 November 2017 |
| Author | Petra Düren,Ane Landøy,Jarmo Saarti |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Librarianship/library management,HR in libraries,Library strategy,Library promotion |
New public management and
libraries: a success story or just
an excuse for cost reduction
Petra Düren
Department of Information, University of Applied Sciences Hamburg,
Hamburg, Germany
Ane Landøy
University of Bergen Library, Bergen, Norway, and
Jarmo Saarti
University of Eastern Finland, Kuopio, Finland
Abstract
Purpose –From the 1980s –in some parts of Europe from the 1990s –onward, the new public management
(NPM) has been emerging in public organizations including libraries. Since then, there has been a need to
develop strategies, to plan budgets and to implement cost and activity accounting as well as benchmarking to
compare the library’s processes, costs and activities with those of other libraries. One basic idea of the NPM
was to make a transition from focusing on how institutions function to product orientation, to improve the
quality of library services, to develop output orientation and to act market and consumer oriented. There also
was a need to change from bureaucratic and hierarchically acting organizations to a more modern flexible and
lean form of management. The paper aims to discuss these issues.
Design/methodology/approach –The aim of this paper is in the first part to describe the basic ideas of
NPM, their realization in libraries and how libraries have to handle constantly reduced budgets and the risk
of being closed down (especially in the “age of austerity”); the second part will show how the University of
Eastern Finland (UEF) Library has managed to improve its services with the NPM approach.
Findings –Many libraries are face d with serious financi al cutbacks on the one hand and with
emergent needs to (re) invest in neglected public infrastructure on the other hand. At the sa me time, they
have to develop modern d igital library services. Thus there i s a need for efficiency, which is put in ac tion
via major budget cutba cks. Also many libraries h ave been closed down sin ce the implementation o f
NPM ideas.
Originality/value –In this paper, the NPM tools used in the restructuring of the UEF are described and the
outcome of this modern management is shown.
Keywords NPM, Public library, Academic library, New public management, Financial cutbacks,
University of Eastern Finland
Paper type Research paper
1. New public management (NPM ) and its significance for libraries
From the 1980s –in some parts of Europe not before the 1990s –onward, the NPM has
emerged in public organizations (Hood, 1991, p. 1; Werner, 2001, pp. 82, 85) including public
and academic libraries. NPM entails a need to develop strategies, to plan budgets based on
these strategies and control that the goals –especially the customer satisfaction as most
important goal –are met. Also, libraries have to implement cost and activity accounting and
performance measurement with an emphasis on output and outcome instead of input,
as well as benchmarking to compare the library’s processes, costs and activities with those
of other libraries (Düren, 2009, p. 163). Or as Pors and Johannsen (2003, p. 52) summarize it:
“NPM is a movement that tries to transfer principles from private sector into the public
sphere”and with this into libraries.
The basic idea of NPM was to make a transition toward product orientation, to improve
the quality of the library service delivery, to develop output orientation and to act market
and consumer oriented. There also was a need or at least an attempt to change from
Library Management
Vol. 38 No. 8/9, 2017
pp. 477-487
© Emerald PublishingLimited
0143-5124
DOI 10.1108/LM-01-2017-0005
Received 11 January 2017
Revised 27 April 2017
Accepted 5 May 2017
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0143-5124.htm
477
NPM and
libraries
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