Thinking about Management: An Approach to Self‐analysis for Library Managers Available to Purchase

Knowledge structures exist in various forms. Subject disciplines exemplify them and are characterised by substantive and procedural patterns of knowledge and methodological strategies. Ways of knowing and coming to know also exemplify them, and these are characterised by cognitive styles and factors like valuation and intentionality. Multi‐disciplinary subjects such as management in libraries and information services are typified by multi‐ordinacy in knowledge structures and multi‐paradigmacy among experts and practitioners. A research exercise was devised to elicit views of management from such experts and practitioners. In response to propositional statements about management, inferences about the conceptual underlays of practising library managers can arguably be made to illuminate decision making and the process of self‐concept management.