Intra-organizational careers in Estonian university libraries: a necessity and a possibility?

Abstract

Purpose -The aim of the current article is to clarify whether the staff of Estonian university libraries has enough possibilities for self-realization and variety in their everyday work; whether employees see any relationship between their personal performance improvement and their intra-organizational career and, whether they see any possibility and/or necessity for promotion within their library. Design/methodology/approach -The data used in this paper are based on reviewing of relevant literature to provide an overview of the concept of intra-organizational career as well as on the results of the original online survey, created by the paper's authors, held in 2011/2012 in Estonian university libraries governed by public law in Estonia. The analysis of the results is interpreted on the basis of the literature, authors' opinions, based on long-term working experience in Estonian academic libraries and on the legislation of Estonia. Findings -Estonian university librarians are relatively pessimistic about career opportunities within their libraries, and, unfortunately do not see any relation between performance improvement and their career. The biggest problem is that the younger librarians do not see any opportunities for promotion. In Estonian university libraries, there does not exist an adequate grading system for promotion. Practical implications -Based on the current study, it can be said that the biggest challenge for university libraries in Estonia is to keep young professionals in libraries and in this way prevent the continuing growth of the average age of employees in the organization. This challenge would require from managements of the university libraries: to take bolder action in analyzing personnel and staff developments and promotion plans; to build up an adequate and clear career system; and pay more attention to the organizations' internal reserves. Originality/value -The majority of the literature in library science in Estonia has focused -and rightfully so -on the user: what do users and patrons want and/or need, how do they use it, how can librarians best provide it to them, do the users feel themselves comfortable in library building, etc. No research has been previously carried out in the Estonian library context to determine employees' attitudes towards librarians intra-organizational career development opportunities. The issues that emerge from this survey could be helpful for library managers, but also for employees.

Professional staff in universities: Career needs, values, attitudes and behaviours

“…By using both convergent and holistic triangulation, it is hoped that convergent themes will be found across the methods and also that one method will offer additional insight that can be used to extend the understanding of the phenomenon under study (Turner et al., 2017). Previous scholars have used mixed methods to study aspects of careers, for example, to understand the career paths of women working in campus recreation roles (Bower & Hums, 2003), exploration of the development needs of women to progress to senior roles (Tessens, White, & Web, 2011) and career progression of university librarians (Kont & Jantson, 2013). These examples, although having collected and analysed quantitative and qualitative data, have not offered a true integration of the data sets to advance the understanding of the problem being studied.…”

The careers of university professional staff: a systematic literature review

“…Gardner et al (2014) focussed on African-American administrators because of their underrepresentation in American universities. Two studies focussed on university departments: libraries (Kont and Jantson, 2013) and medical centres (Renkema et al, 2009). Two studies focussed on women working in campus athletic departments (Hancock and Hums, 2016;Won et al, 2013), and two examined women in recreation departments (Bower and Hums, 2003;Waller et al, 2015).…”

“…There is evidence that traditional seniority-based structures influenced career progression opportunities in HE. A number of studies identified organisational hierarchical structure and size (Gardner et al, 2014;Hancock and Hums, 2016;Kont and Jantson, 2013;Nabi, 1999) negatively influenced career progression opportunities and perceptions of career success. Kont and Jantson (2013) identified extremely low staff turnover, fewer management positions, no defined grading scale and vacancies filled by external applicants led to limited promotion opportunities for younger staff.…”

“…A number of studies identified organisational hierarchical structure and size (Gardner et al, 2014;Hancock and Hums, 2016;Kont and Jantson, 2013;Nabi, 1999) negatively influenced career progression opportunities and perceptions of career success. Kont and Jantson (2013) identified extremely low staff turnover, fewer management positions, no defined grading scale and vacancies filled by external applicants led to limited promotion opportunities for younger staff. When advancement opportunities were limited (Gardner et al, 2014;Ricketts and Pringle, 2014;Tessens et al, 2011) this was noted as a career barrier.…”

The civil service careers of university support staff and new public management: A qualitative study from Chile

“…Other factors identified as barriers are a pessimistic attitude, exhaustion, weak links between performance and promotion, salary, career alternatives, limited opportunities for development, work/family conflict, relationship with the supervisor and institutional fit (Kont and Jantson, 2013; Marshall et al, 2016). As for facilitators, mentoring has been outlined as a critical factor in career development (Bozionelos, 2004), as well as the psychological work contract (Aydin et al, 2008).…”