Library Planning and Policy Making: The Legacy of the Public and Private Sectors

Molz traces the influence of managerial concepts derived from both the public and the private sectors on the conduct of the nation's libraries. Private-sector businesses and corporations originated comprehensive rational planning, with its emphasis on efficiency and effectiveness. By contrast, public administration has been identified with an incremental and pluralistic managerial direction in which political processes dominate. Molz attempts to restore the balance between those aspects of planning that focus unduly on measurable quantitative forces and those that emphasize the qualitative and behavioral factors so often abridged in formal planning cycles.