Silvia Vong, "Critical Management Studies and Librarianship" (Library Juice Press, 2024)
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Welcome to the New Books Network.

Sylvia, I am so excited to welcome you to this podcast and to talk about this book. But maybe before we dive into talking about the book specifically, maybe you can introduce yourself a little. If you could share a bit about your background.

where you grew up, what kind of path your education took, and then the work you're doing now at University of Toronto. Yeah, sure. So I grew up in Scarborough, Ontario in Canada. And I didn't expect to become a librarian, but I did. So I studied in my undergrad in Queen's University. And then a friend of mine said, hey, you know, I think you'd be so great for library school.

And at the time I was working in a records management department thinking, oh, I'll just go into records management. Ended up doing my MLIS at Western University and loved librarianship, being introduced to the varying aspects of it and writing.

got a job at York University, started out as a reference librarian. And then my mentor said, hey, Solia, you seem like you love teaching. Why don't you get a master's in education? And so I ended up getting a master's in education. And then

And then really informed my practice as a librarian. But as this was happening, I was working full time as a librarian and transitioning into a management role. And so I didn't expect to get into management. But my work with the union that I was with, like I was a grievance officer. I was a unit chair. I also did bargaining. That all kind of inspired me to kind of take on a management role because I wanted to understand the other end of things.

why managers in bargaining would say or do or make decisions the way that they did. And that was in part because I just wanted to understand both sides of the coin there. It's

Because human experience is so complex, right? And then as all this was happening, I decided I'll do a PhD. So I'm at the tail end. My research looks at the issues of new public management and its impact on equity, diversity, and inclusion work, specifically anti-racism work with some mention of decolonization work.

and how institutions are capitalizing the work rather than following through with committing to the work in a real way. And so that's how I've gotten to that point. It's 15 years now of professional work

I'm now kind of moving towards back to, in a way, education, really focused on teaching, but now at the library school or the iSchool at the University of Toronto. For me, I kind of recognized as I was navigating management for so long that some of the issues in management was that

The way that management is trained and taught is very much rooted in business ethics and practice. And that might not always work in a lot of scenarios where you have, you know, human to human relations, which should take maybe, you know, an ethic of care drawn from the social work realm or the education realm or from other realms of study rather than business. So that's really what inspired me.

the book and, you know, my path as well. So they're much intertwined. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, what you're saying resonates so much because my library school management classes did feel really rooted in business and felt really, um,

I'm disconnected with the work that we were hoping to do. And when I sat down and read your book, I wish we had had this book when I was back in library school. So maybe we can talk a little bit more about the book, Critical Management Studies and Librarianship, Critical Perspectives on Library Management, Education and Practice. This is an edited collection. And you give a really deep dive into the intersection of CMS or critical management studies and library work.

So I was hoping that you could give listeners some background on what critical management studies is, what important questions this field is asking, and what it brings to the field of management and organizational studies. Yeah, thank you. So first off, I'm going to differentiate between management and leadership because those terms are often conflated. And I notice in popular media, we kind of

managers as leaders, but the term leadership actually applies to everyone. Everyone can lead. A manager is a role. And so what I guess the business world has done is co-opted the term leadership. And so that's why I've chosen to use the term critical management because

You'll notice more and more a lot of literature will kind of say critical leadership, but a lot of the voices in those books tend to be managers. But again, I just want to differentiate. I am using critical management studies as a term because I am acknowledging that the people who are writing in this book either have been managers or are in manager positions.

type roles or going into management roles. And so critical management studies kind of came out actually from the business world, oddly, where some business ethics researchers kind of said, well,

our field is not working. Like we are, we are failing at training the future managers because they are, you know, the corporate greed, the capitalistic mindset, all of that is being reproduced. There is no social responsibility. There is no ethical responsibility to the people in the organization. We need to come up with an area that

that talks about this so that we teach it in business school.

And so a bunch of researchers came up with this kind of area. Alveson's typically credited with it, but there have been since then many other scholars who have brought in things like critical race theory perspectives in intersection with CMS, critical management studies, and then, you know, critical leadership studies will sometimes kind of like connect to critical management studies and

Although it is critical leadership studies is rooted in business as well. Like a lot of business ethics scholars also do critical leadership studies work. So it kind of formed to address those gaps in business, but have kind of expanded into different areas of,

that recognized that, you know, managers in other kind of fields are not doing a good job. Because again, a lot of business schools or management training is rooted in business, in management studies, organizational studies, which are rooted in economics, market logic,

in, you know, capitalistic ideologies, neoliberal ideologies. And this can be a problem when you're leading, managing an organization and you're adopting a market logic to addressing a human issue.

which is kind of obviously going to turn out really bad and be dehumanizing because it's not intended for that, right? Market logic, economic logic is intended to address financial issues, not human issues. So that's the CMS field in a very broad, broad kind of summary. And the important questions it tends to ask is, you know, what are we doing? Right?

Like what's happening here, which I'm going to be a little playful here, but they're really asking about, you know, what is problematic about management training programs? How are we training future managers? What is happening in the management field that's allowing problematic managers to step into roles, right?

Over and over again, the same type of people that are narcissistic or, you know, managers that are, you know, fanning the flames of discord in an organization. Like, how do these kind of people manage?

enter these roles? Um, and why do we allow them to continue to act in that way? Um, and what are the barriers that allow for maybe a manager who is different, who doesn't adopt those business practices? What, what prevents them from entering those jobs in those spaces? Um, and so those are the kind of questions that CMS, uh, can ask. Thank you. Um,

And then I want to talk a little bit about the voices that we get to hear in this book. There's 11 chapters by library workers who bring a really, really broad range of experiences and perspectives to this work. And those chapters make up the first three sections of the book. So can you talk a little bit about who we get to hear from, what kinds of libraries they're working in, and what kinds of perspectives and critiques they're bringing? Yeah, absolutely. So when I put up the call, I kind of...

Really kept it really broad. The intention was to get a range of different experiences and as well as different perspectives because I think that's part of that inclusiveness approach if we are to take up that critical management lens is we want to bring in different perspectives that really –

illustrate either the issues or provide insights into how to address some of these issues. And so in the first section, that kind of, that section focused on experiences, like the real experiences people had as an employee turned manager or manager, you know, reflecting on experiences. And so we have, you know, a couple chapters here.

that focused on the personal experience of navigating institutions as an employee and as a manager, particularly as women of color. And so their experiences of navigating those structures. So we really like to, in CMS, there's a real strong focus not only on the human experience, but as well as calling out the structures of

And so Laurie, in the first chapter there, talks about navigating the institution and being a mother, being pregnant, the laws, the policies, all of that. And then Enam talks about the kind of barriers, the gendered barriers of identifying as being a woman of color, navigating patriarchal structure, etc.

And then we have Elena, who I interviewed, a good colleague of mine who wrote a book called Six Step Guide to Library Worker Engagement and kind of shares her experience with being a manager and providing consulting for organizations on improving, you know, leadership or when there are issues in the organization, how to take a DEI lens.

to, to addressing issues. And, and then we have Ashley and Karen who wrote about promoting change and their experience of going through the process of

utilizing a concept in critical management studies, which is critical performativity within their unit when they were restructuring related to instruction and their department. And reflecting on that process, the challenges that they faced and how they would reimagine things. So holding themselves accountable and kind of recounting that story and their experiences. Yeah.

In the second part, I've kind of organized the stories of folks who kind of offer insights from their own experience of how to improve upon management practices and identifying issues in management practices. And Mahasin talks about the experience of, you know, strategic positioning of Black librarians,

and tokenism around that and the importance of recognizing that when you're doing that, how to recognize it and address it in a way that respects and is inclusive of Black librarians. And then Kathleen talks about languishing managers. So how we...

kind of allow when managers are struggling or not doing well, we kind of replace them or put them elsewhere rather than, you know, try to really, really address the issue at a deeper level. And how we appoint them is also has been an issue of, you know, you often hear the stories of

You know, if somebody isn't capable of doing the job, then we're going to put them in a management role. And that can be a very problematic practice when you're dealing with, you know, organizational issues. You know, if somebody's not doing well, rather than try to build and invest in building their skills, we think the solution is let's just place them in a management position. And that can be really harmful because it assumes –

that that person is just going to be a wonderful manager or we're just going to push the problem away and not deal with it. But it impacts the people that have to deal with it, which is the employees that report to that manager. Dania looks at critical management studies and performance management in academic libraries and kind of

impacts the kind of concepts around that. And then Reese also looks at project management as a neoliberal tool and kind of calls it out and kind of

wants people to think more thoughtfully about when they use it and how they use it because it can be useful in some places. But, you know, when we overuse things, which we tend to do when we're excited about a business tool or business idea, we want to expand on it. And

it can be a problem because we place it in areas that might not fit. And so, for example, sometimes I do work around reaching out to Indigenous groups. And yes, we need timelines to the work that we're doing, but placing timelines on Indigenous groups when you're building relationships is a very problematic practice. So, you know, context matters and where you use those kind of tools.

And then we have the other section on reimagining dominant management practices. And we have folks that kind of utilize a framework to...

reimagine how managers should adopt like certain frameworks to their work. And so Elizabeth and Dawn talk about the work of Alfredo Chapman, who is known for doing social justice related work. So framing management practice around social justice.

Wanda and Sarah is trying to talk about kind of democracy and democratic approaches to leading. And then Rebecca talks about trauma-informed management practices, sort of building off of the book that Rebecca wrote on trauma-informed librarianship. And then finally, the last kind of area is kind of a set of case studies that I've written, which we'll get into later. Yeah.

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Fantastic. I thank you for that great summary. I know it's a lot to kind of orient listeners to, but I wanted to give folks a snapshot of what they'll find in this book and I hope people pick it up and read it. And then, yeah.

Yeah, I was thinking a lot while reading of, you know, who is this book for? And that, to me, seemed like too easy of a question. I feel like it's for anyone who works in a library or who wants to work in a library. But I'm really curious about whether you agree with me on that.

And if you do or if you don't, but I guess if you do, I'd love to hear your thoughts on why management and especially clinical management studies is important for all library workers to be reading and thinking about. Yeah. So just a fun fact, some organizations will hire coaches who are outside of libraries to coach library managers. I think those...

that group of people should also read this book because sometimes I think when you're a coach and you're external and you're, because I've done a bit of coaching training, you know, you're given tools to kind of help people work through an individual work through a problem. But what happens is sometimes the coach doesn't know, they only know a scenario based on the person they're talking to, which is typically the manager. I think it's good for the coaches that do this work that are not librarians to

or not working in libraries themselves to kind of orient themselves and understand the issues that might be present on the employee side. Because sometimes when...

When you're doing one-on-one coaching as a manager, you're only providing your own feelings, your own perspective on a scenario or an issue. And I think coaches should be aware that it's not a one-sided issue, that maybe sometimes there's another voice there that's missing from that coaching session that's not giving you the full scope of what's happening. And so you might be coaching someone to resolve something that, you know,

that they think the employees are causing a problem with, but it actually might be on the manager side as well. So just that's my note. I mean, it's their choice whether or not they want to know or not know. Coaching is an interesting area as well because it draws on therapy techniques sometimes, but...

That's for the coaches to decide on what to do. For people who work in libraries who aren't in management roles, like I think it's helpful to also just know to empower oneself to kind of go, okay, like there's another way. Like what we're experiencing, this miserable like experience of having someone who's not working out as a manager or maybe the dynamic isn't where it's not you, it's the structures that

That's allowing for the same practice to happen, for a manager to utilize the same strategies that are rooted in market and economic logic rather than the humanizing approaches that you might see in social work or education or even in areas like critical race theory or queer studies, all of that, that take an ethic of care in working with other people.

And so I hope that would help people working in libraries kind of go, okay, there are other ways to do and be a manager.

Definitely. And I was thinking a lot also while reading this book about the number of people who I think actually do really valuable critical management work in libraries who do not have the title of manager. And I do not believe that people should work out of title. However, that is often the reality in our institutions for a wide variety of reasons. And I think like

Reading through this, it helped me identify all the labor that people do that is management work, even if they're not in a management role. And being able to see that and then reflect on it, I think, is really useful. Absolutely. And I think it's helpful to just also...

frame our profession differently because the narrative that I had in library school and you, I don't know if this might be your experience too, is that you would be told you're doing an MIS or you're doing an MI or an ML, MS, LIS, um,

You're going to be a manager. That's why you're getting the master's degree. You are going to be a manager. And, you know, yeah, but library technicians lead and they also have management roles as well. And I think if we're framing our profession in that way, then maybe it's important to also kind of introduce other approaches in these programs other than business and

management or organizational studies, theories and concepts. I mean, yes, to some extent it helps you navigate institutions that adopt these kind of frameworks or concepts, but it shouldn't be our only framework. We should really balance and provide a spectrum of different approaches in recognizing that everybody has an opportunity to lead in different ways and that even leadership is

If you do end up in leadership or you're managing, context matters. Fine. If you're in a budget meeting, it is useful to have and utilize business market logic concepts. But if you're in a one-on-one meeting giving feedback to somebody, then maybe we should be adopting a kind of

social ethical care in that conversation and utilizing frameworks that are more suited to human interaction. Yeah, absolutely.

And so one other thing that you've hinted at already is this fourth section of your book, which I really want to talk more about. So the first three sections of these contributed chapters and the last section is a set of scenarios. Can you describe these scenarios for listeners and how you created them and what they might be used for? Yeah. So I sometimes I teach like workshops or I do. I've done a mini course with critical management studies.

And what's useful is kind of grounding things into like real life kind of scenarios. So because when like there's the concepts that you learn in school and then there's real life. When it happens, you're not going, let me just look up this concept and see how it applies. You know, you're not, you don't have that kind of time to kind of do that like full on analysis application or whatever, right? Sometimes you have to be confronted with a scenario that's complicated and

And try to figure out, hey, like how would I respond?

With my identity, considering my own identity, considering my own context, my own experiences, what would I take from CMS and apply it to this scenario? And so the whole purpose of that section was to kind of explore one's own response using CMS to a scenario that might be common or might come up when you're in a management role.

It is fictional because I did consult ethics because I'm very much of the mind of ethics. So I did talk to, you know, an ethics officer who said, you know, it's always best to kind of do fictional case studies when you're doing these kind of texts. And so I went that route.

That being said, I have been a librarian for 15 years. I've met and talked to many people throughout my career and shared stories and shared experiences. So even though they're fictional, these are written based on things also that I've experienced myself and also have heard from other people.

And the interesting thing is, because some of the scenarios I've actually showed in different sessions and workshops, I've had people write to me after a workshop and say, did you just write about my institution? Do you know someone? And I'll have to say, no, no, no. This is just experience that's informing this scenario. I'm not referring to any specific institution. And that really speaks to kind of the problems that

that still exist in the workplace, in the library workplace. If somebody randomly in a class that I'm doing or a workshop that I'm doing says,

oh, this is too real for me. That says something about the profession and the issues that still exist. So the intention is to be more self-reflective as you're working through those scenarios. But I always say, if it feels too real, take a pause,

Don't do the scenario. Like, do it when you're ready because sometimes it does, like, trigger some personal memory of something that one's experienced and that can happen. No, it's true. I mean, we always think that, like,

That one specific type of dysfunction could only be at our institution. And it's both like reassuring and horrifying to learn that these experiences are maybe more universal. Absolutely. Yeah.

Well, so then I guess beyond the way those scenarios can be used for really directed reflection and learning, how else do you hope the book as a whole will be used? What new conversations are you hoping will start from this? And what other shifts in theory and practice do you hope this can lead to?

Well, my hope is that we keep building on this. I don't want to be the singular voice for this field. I think it's really important that we have lots of perspectives coming in, taking some of the concepts and expanding on them ourselves. It doesn't have to be CMS scholars who are writing about this. It can be us.

as librarians and management roles and non-management roles, continually building on knowledge. I think this is just me as a social constructionist who's like, you know, knowledge is built upon and expanded and we can counter them. And that's important conversations to have.

I've definitely had people email me and say, I don't agree with your conception of CMS. I want to take it in a different direction or you should take it in a different direction. And I'll always write back and say, you should take it in a different direction because I can't be that sole voice. And the more voices we have, the more that we can build on and allow other people to kind of make those decisions of where or what direction they want to take.

I do have some wonderful colleagues who are doing critical leadership studies who are, you know, kind of expanding and taking it in different realms to talk about leadership, to be more inclusive of folks who don't have formal management roles. And that's important, too.

So my hope is that we keep talking about this and it's not a book that just, you know, is the only book and then we end there. It's like, no, let's have other versions and let's have other editors do this kind of book to really build and curate and kind of create narratives of different ways of interpreting critical management studies. Yeah.

Totally. Yeah. Scholarship is about having a conversation. Yeah. That's a nice shout out to the framework.

Well, I've taken a lot of your time, but before we wrap up, I want to give you a chance to share what else you're working on now that you finished this book. I mean, you also mentioned the PhD that is maybe nearing the end, but are there other research projects on your plate that you want to share about or anything else you're working on that

Oh, gosh. I'm always working on this. I think it's sort of something – and partly why I left my management role was because I thought, you know, the problem isn't that – it isn't just how we're picking or how we're allowing problems and problematic practices to continue, but it's how we're educating our future, you know, librarians and

And so I decided to go back to teach. And so I'm designing a course right now on critical leadership because we have a lot of librarians. I want to make sure it's as inclusive as possible. Library students who might want to learn about leadership, but through an EDI lens.

So I'm designing that course right now for our students. Often, you know, some of the questions I get in the past year I've gotten is, how do I lead EDI? I don't know what I'm supposed to do or where I'm supposed to start. And that's a fair question. Like sometimes it's really, you're kind of trying to imagine yourself, where do I fit in this? And so

I'm hoping to construct a course to help people like recognize there are different ways to approach this work and we can approach it within a thing of care in a way that doesn't fall into the concept of saviorism that we are kind of leading in a way that is in partnership rather than, you know, reinforcing like white saviorism or saviorism as a concept.

And then the other thing I'm working on are a couple of research projects that are collaborative autoethnography on leadership and leading both as informal roles and informal roles. And so just kind of constructing knowledge through those conversations through collaborative autoethnography.

And then finally, a project on abusive supervision, the concept of that. So what happens when there is problematic behaviors from a manager and what impact does that have on an employee and how do we support and call out these problematic behaviors and address them immediately rather than

try to blame it on the employee. We should really be looking at our structures and systems to address these problematic behaviors rather than have employees address it themselves or, you know, go to the union or, you know, seek mental health. Like this is putting it too much on the employees and

Not enough on the people doing the harm. Absolutely. Yeah. Well, that's really exciting. So many great things to look forward to. Yeah. Well, thank you so much, Sylvia. And once again, I've been chatting today with Sylvia Vong, editor of Critical Management Studies and Librarianship, Critical Perspectives on Library Management, Education, and Practice, published by LibraryJuice Press in November 2024. My name is Jen Hoyer, and you're listening to New Books Network.