Managing Information Services: A Transformational Approach (2nd ed.)

Citation

Jansová, L. (2009), "Managing Information Services: A Transformational Approach (2nd ed.)", Journal of Documentation, Vol. 65 No. 6, pp. 1016-1020. https://doi.org/10.1108/00220410910998979

This second edition of Jo Bryson's book entitled Managing Information Services: A Transformational Approach follows the first edition of essentially the same work published as Managing Information Services: An Integrated Approach (Bryson, 1997). The second edition can serve as an evident proof of the title's success and usefulness. In the preface to the second edition the author also clearly shows that an extension of the original scope of the work has become a necessity. While the first edition promoted the integrated approach resulting from the combination of a variety of disciplines (ranging from librarianship to computing and telecommunications), nowadays coverage of a wider range of issues (i.e. inclusion of other types of cultural institutions) seems to be desirable.

The book is divided into the following seven parts (followed by the epilogue):

1. 1.

   Part I: Managing in a dynamic environment.

2. 2.

   Part II: Planning and managing for transformation.

3. 3.

   Part III: Creating the right corporate environment.

4. 4.

   Part IV: Transforming the corporate environment.

5. 5.

   Part V: Managing yourself and others.

6. 6.

   Part VI: Governance and sccountability.

7. 7.

   Part VII: Positioning to excel in service delivery.

These parts are further subdivided into 31 chapters – their numbers in individual parts vary from two in Part I to seven in Part VI. The book is organized in a fashion which is easy to understand and can significantly help the reader – not only a person who intends to read the book from cover to cover but also a person who is about to seek for information on a particular topic or subtopic is able to proceed without any difficulties. Moreover, as the book contains an index (pp. 337‐346), it becomes very convenient to use the book as a reference material. The text is also complemented with a total of 57 figures (including graphs and tables).

If we have a quick look at the table of contents of the 1997 edition of the book, it gives us an idea about significant changes being made in the 2nd edition. While the second edition is divided into seven parts (see above), the 1st edition was composed of nine parts – these were entitled:

1. 1.

   Understanding the role of manager.

2. 2.

   Understanding the environment.

3. 3.

   Managing the information through integrated planning.

4. 4.

   Creating the corporate environment.

5. 5.

   Getting things done in the corporate environment.

6. 6.

   Managing and communicating information in the corporate environment.

7. 7.

   Managing the individual.

8. 8.

   Managing risk.

9. 9.

   Service delivery.

The 1st edition comprises a total of 39 chapters (the last of these being an epilogue). We can conclude that the second edition of the book has been substantially revised both in terms of content (a shift from an integrated to a transformational approach, to use Jo Bryson's terminology, or a shift from focus on managerial issues to focus on leadership in the knowledge age where intangible assets such as knowledge play a vital role) and structure (lower number of parts and chapters in the latest edition).

The 2nd edition of Jo Bryson's work can be used both by experienced professionals who have already come across at least some of the topics covered in their career and by novices in the field, especially LIS students. In the preface the author herself says that “[i]t is a management handbook for people working in information services in small to medium sized organizations, and a management textbook for students in information services, librarianship, records management and information and communication technology (ICT)” (p. ix) and emphasizes that “[t]he concept of the parent organization is used throughout the book” (p. x). However, a number of points made in the book (e.g. providing examples from public libraries) can persuade the reader that the book can be used both by managers of information services residing within larger organizations (of either commercial, or non‐commercial nature) and by managers of information institutions which are run independently, i.e. do not constitute a part of a larger organization but may be funded by such an organization (e.g. a public library financed by a local municipality). It could also provide some basic guidance for independent information professionals (e.g. one‐person companies), although in this case books like “Building & running a successful research business: a guide for the independent information professional” (Bates, 2003) would definitely be more appropriate.

The book provides a valuable overview of management in a specific context of information services. It presents a holistic view of the subject which lies on the intersection of management and library and information science. From a certain point of view, the book can be used as a “cookbook” for managers of information services. However, clearly this is not its primary purpose – it can be said that it provides a wider picture of the “cooking” experience (if one is permitted to use such a metaphor), or provides a solid basis for further study of the subject. It deals with a number of topics or subtopics – most of them are in one way or another related to human resources, to various aspects of people behaviour under different professional circumstances or in a variety of work related situations – parts IV and V of Jo Bryson's book can serve as an evidence.

In this regard I especially appreciate the fact that the book places an emphasis on the roles of innovation and creativity in management and especially on creating and maintaining of relationships – in today's interconnected world it becomes a necessity for an information service to foster interactions both with internal and external environments and to specify the information service's role within the organization and its information‐related activities ranging from information technology management to knowledge management. For the future edition of the book the author may consider dedicating more space to virtual teams as these are becoming an everyday reality in the information professional's life and – compared to teams which meet primarily face‐to‐face – bear some special characteristics which the manager of the information service should be aware of.

A positive feature of the book is also the fact that it does not go into unnecessary and superfluous details, e.g. in chapter 6 on p. 81 the author indicates that “[a]s ICT is subject to rapid change the operational management of specific technologies has not been addressed”. However, on pp. 86‐7, when speaking about ways of acquiring new ICT projects, Jo Bryson does not mention free and open source software which is rather widely used nowadays as the number of potentially useful projects is on the rise (e.g. an open source integrated library software Evergreen, www.evergreen‐ils.org/).

What can also be appreciated in Jo Bryson's work is the lucid style of various explanations or providing easy‐to‐remember and concise definitions of abstract concepts, especially in the introductory sections of chapters. These include an explanation of a concept of a measure of success in the knowledge age as “the extent to which an organization adds value through innovation, inventive systems and processes and the exploitation of knowledge and information” (p. 250) or, indeed, of a concept of innovation itself which is described as “the ability to turn knowledge and bright ideas into an opportunity or to use these ideas to solve a problem” (p. 131). This way the abstract and rather general concepts become more tangible; it is definitely easier for the reader to associate the abstract concept with a particular example (be it a real‐life case or a theoretical case) and read the subsequent text with this notion in mind.

On the other hand, although the book includes some particular examples that illustrate the theory (e.g. Figure 3.3 on p. 41 showing a hierarchy of objectives in an information service, Figure 4.3 on p. 50 with a sample job description, Figure 7.3 on p. 99 presenting a table of expenses for input into costing model, or an example of corporate governance principles as defined by the Australian Stock Exchange Corporate Governance Council on p. 228), I believe more examples linking managerial topics to the particular settings of information services would have been beneficial for the reader, especially for a person who has not been actively involved in management yet, e.g. a LIS student. The examples can take a shape of case studies from different real information services or it can be a fictitious information service. In this case a recent book by Mesh Collaboration: Creating New Business Value in the Network of Everything (Mulholland and Earle, 2008) may be a good source of inspiration as the book as a whole is conceived as a story of a person (Jane Moneymaker) from a fictitious company called Vorpal, Inc. I do not suggest to redesign the book Managing Information Services: A Transformational Approach entirely in this manner. However, this provides an opportunity for possible future editions of the book to include particular examples even in cases when it would not usually be possible to quote particular real‐life cases as it may interfere with principles of business ethics or data confidentiality.

There is also a certain space for improvement in conclusions which sum up the major points made in individual chapters. These conclusions are extremely short, often composed of a single paragraph (52 per cent of chapters) or of two paragraphs (26 per cent); in a couple of cases three paragraphs (19 per cent), in one case (3 per cent) four paragraphs are included (in chapter 21 the conclusion is not even marked as such – instead, the subheading “Developing for common good” is used). It goes without saying that in order to promote wider use of the book either for educational, or for practical purposes, longer and slightly more detailed conclusions would be more than welcome as they would let the reader easily refresh main messages from the chapters. In my view, more devices for better visual segmentation of the text, such as highliting important points by using bold type, could also be applied.

Almost each chapter (with the exception of chapters 10 and 17) contains References and/or Further reading sections. Yet, the number of items included in these two sections is relatively low. The average number of references per chapter is approx. 1.6 and the average number of items included in Further reading reaches 4.4. As this book is also intended for novices in the field, a reader might expect more references to be included, either directly quoted or paraphrased in the text (and then added in the References section), or just recommended for further study (and then inserted into the Further reading part of a particular chapter).

In some cases references to other resources would be of particular value, e.g. on p. 89, when writing about outcomes in managing ICT and other assets, Jo Bryson states that “[e]fficiency and effectiveness measures should be developed to assess and evaluate these outcomes” but does not mention any sources which may give the reader an idea about how such measures may look like or be developed. In chapter 18 dealing with personal communication and networking, any (but preferably the latest) edition of Human Communication might be a useful reference for readers interested in further exploration of this topic (Tubbs and Moss, 2008).

I thoroughly agree with another reviewer of this book who has pointed out that “[a]dditional reading is limited and it is a shame that few, if any, works cited were online resources” (Pymm, 2008, p. 61). As it is often difficult to properly judge the trustworthiness of online resources, it may be worthwhile to add references to credible online resources on topics covered by the chapters. The author does so only in a couple of chapters, e.g. in chapter 6.

For a possible future edition of the book I would also suggest to consider adding a web support of the book which would make the contents of the book more interactive – this has been done with a number of titles already (a web site dedicated to Mesh Collaboration: Creating New Business Value in the Network of Everything (Mulholland and Earle, 2008) available at www.meshcollaboration.com/ can be mentioned at this point). Moreover, this way the book becomes more visible and therefore better promoted on the Internet. The publisher's web site available at www.ashgate.com/ currently includes a web page dedicated to the title but apart from basic bibliographic information, quotations from reviews or links to extracts from the book (table of contents, preface and index) it does not offer any other title‐specific features which would persuade potential readers to get more involved (such as a list of events, a blog or a contact form specifically related to the title).

To conclude, I would like to underline that the second edition of Jo Bryson's book on managing information services definitely belongs to must‐read books for LIS professionals, especially those in managerial positions of various levels. If the author and the publisher decide to prepare another edition of the book and possibly include more particular examples and references and elaborate conclusions in the chapters, there is no doubt that the book will be appreciated by the readers even more.