ABSTRACT
An organisational character involves the piecing together of structures, processes, behaviour, information systems and learning programmes to create an organic unity. Structures affect the growth of all the desirable organisational characteristics which people would expect to see in all flexible organisations. In the public library sector the search for new structures has so far led to decentralisation, smaller management teams, and operational units as small as possible, matrix management, decentralisation of personnel issues, budgetary control pushed down the structure, and also teams. In conventional libraries, the processes that operations rely on fall into three broad groups, usually umbilically linked to hierarchical structures: holistic processes, controlling processes, and operational processes. The chapter presents the case study of reorganising the services, and describes developing organic structures, tinkering with the layers, boundaryless organisations, the information network, how to build the system, and information technology division.
