Leadership Style and Job Effectiveness of Librarians in South-West Nigerian Universities

Abstract

Job effectiveness of academic librarians in today's information age is important as they are expected to be the vanguard of acquiring, processing, storing and disseminating information to users. It is of utmost importance for academic librarians to provide quality information to support teaching, learning, research and community service. However, the general opinion among professional members and studies revealed low level of job effectiveness of librarians which could be due to certain factors in their work environment like leadership style. The study investigated the extent to which leadership style influenced job effectiveness of librarians in universities in South-West, Nigeria. The study adopted the survey research design. Population of study consisted of 373 librarians from 35 university libraries in South-West, Nigeria. Total enumeration was used. A validated questionnaire was used as the instrument for data collection. The Cronbach's alpha reliability coefficients for each of the variables ranged from 0.96 to 0.98. Response rate was 80.96%. Data analysis was done using correlation and multiple regression The findings showed that Leadership style in terms of transformational, transactional and laissez-faire had a significant positive relationship with job effectiveness (r =.704, p <.05). The study concluded that a positive relationship existed between leadership style and job effectiveness. This study made recommendations to improve job effectiveness and leadership styles, one of which is that academic librarians should use a leadership style that encourages effective performance from academic librarians at any given time.