Autocratic Leadership

Introduction

The library plays a paramount role in this challenging and changing world where the economy is knowledge-based;by the provision, processing, packaging, preservation and dissemination of information resources. The success of the library in achieving these roles effectively rest upon the leadership of the library. The word leadership has been used in various aspects of human endeavors such as politics, business, academics and social works. A leader is a person who takes the central roles in interaction and who influences the behavior of other members of a group. Fatokun, Salaam, Ajebomogunand Adidipe described a leader as an individual who has authority over others and who is responsible for guiding their actions. In academic libraries, university and college/polytechnic librarians are the managers of the libraries and will be described as leaders in this work.

Leadership has, however assumed greater importance in today's organization including the library because of emerging force of globalization, technological innovations and workers expectations. These forces require dynamic and efficient leadership, anchored on strong ability to, not only combine resources in the most efficient ways, but to build a formidable work force that will work with enthusiasm for the achievement of goals. Leadership involves inducement; persuasion and motivation of subordinates to enable them contribute willingly to the organizational goals based on the employee's maximum capabilities.

Stodgill in a survey of leadership theories and research argue that, "there are almost as many different definitions of leadership as there are persons who have attempted to define the concept". Stodgill's statement points directly to the fact that leadership as a managerial technique or skill is becoming very important to the manager particularly in a developing context. Leadership is defined as the process of directing and influencing the task-related activities of group members. This definition has three important elements. Firstly, every leadership situation involves people-leaders and followers or subordinates by the voluntary consent or willingness to follow the leader and make leadership process possible. Secondly, all leadership situations involve unequal distribution of power between the leader and the group members (subordinates). Because of unique; distribution or power, the leader has to give command and subordinates are bound to obey. If all members within the group share power equally, then we can possibly refer to the group as a leaderless one. Every group must have a leader. The distinguishing factor between a leader and members of a group is the fact that the leader has superior powers as opposed to members of the group. Thirdly, leaders must have some unique qualities that should make them be able to influence the activities of group members. This kind of influence should however, revolve around behaviors that have to positively change the work attitude of subordinates.

In libraries, like any other organization, there are leaders whose behavior and personality traits influence others to perform their legitimate duty. In other words, leaders must possess style which enable them to achieve desired goals through proper co-ordination and direction of the path goal. These styles determine, to a large extent, what leaders see and how they respond to situations around them. The influence of any style of leadership on the workforce, especially on the subordinate librarians will be bearable if the library leadership will achieve set goal. This is because followers are influenced when leadership and followership are properly linked. And in this respect, the subordinate job performance of librarians comes to bear to properly link leadership in academic libraries.

A manager can increase has contribution towards employee's performance by role perception. How he sees himself as leader determines how he can influence his subordinates. The chief librarian as the leader in the academic library should have a peculiar style of leadership that will yield productivity and enhance the performance of his or her subordinates. There are different leadership styles adopted by leaders of academic libraries in Rivers State and which would have their impact on subordinates' job performance in these libraries.

Mgbodile states that despite the varying terminologies used by experts to describe management styles of leadership, it has been generally agreed that style used by men in leadership position can be put into three main types; autocratic, democratic and liassez-faire leadership styles. Each of these leadership styles has impact on subordinate job performance in the library. This paper will dwell on the autocratic form of leadership.