LEADERSHIP STYLES AND CONTEMPORARY CHALLENGES AMONG LIBRARY PROFESSIONALS IN PAKISTANI UNIVERSITIES: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY

Abstract

The leadership of library professionals of Pakistani universities is more dependent on the organizational context within which they work than on the behaviours of individuals themselves. This research studies the leadership styles of library professionals and the relationship between such styles and the modern-day challenges faced by them in public and private universities recognized by the Higher Education Commission in Pakistan. Quantitative research using population survey sampling was employed to obtain data from library professionals from all provinces in Pakistan. The results show that the most predominant are transformational, democratic and, transactional styles of leadership, which is a marked deviation from previous evidence about the dominance of autocracy in Pakistani libraries. No relationship was found between the leadership style and the challenges, a result which calls into question the contingency approach to leadership and highlights structural and institutional factors as opposed to individual behaviour as the main determinants of leadership difficulty. The challenges faced included Staff resistance, lack of top management support, and resource constraints, which were the most frequently reported. The study contributes the first national-scale quantitative evidence on this relationship in Pakistan and argues that style development, while valuable, cannot substitute for institutional governance reform as the primary mechanism for improving library leadership outcomes.

Keywords: leadership styles, library professionals, university libraries, Pakistan, transformational leadership, democratic leadership, leadership challenges, higher education