Participative management in academic library services

Abstract

Participative management is based on the assumption that empowering people throughout the enterprise will result in a more responsive, more flexible, and ultimately more successful enterprise. Participative management is more than a willingness to share influence ‐ formal patterns of participation need to be truly implemented where employees have a right to contribute on all levels of decision‐making. The empirical survey showed that participative management is applied at academic information services in the Gauteng province of South Africa, but more so in low‐level decisions. This indicates that participation is still limited and controlled by management and is not yet experienced as a right by employees.