TRANSACTIONAL AND TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP STYLES ANDLIBRARY STAFF PRODUCTIVITY IN FEDERAL UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES OFSOUTH-SOUTH NIGERIA

Abstract

University Librarian spans duties from motivation to creating an enabling environment for
staff to contribute meaningfully towards the attainment of the library goals and objectives.
Hence this study sought to determine if transactional and transformational leadership styles
could influence library staff productivity in federal university libraries of South-South Nigeria.
To achieve these objectives two purposes of study, two research questions and two research
hypotheses were set out to guide the study. The research design adopted in this study was
correlational research design. The population of this study consisted 458 respondents (128
professionals and 330 para-professionals’ librarians) in the seven federal university libraries
of south-south Nigeria. Purposive sampling technique was used to sample 354 respondents
(118 professionals and 236 para-professional librarians from the university libraries under
study. Instrument for data collection was validated by three experts, two experts from the
Department of Educational Technology, Library and Information Science and one from the
Department of Psychological Foundation, University of Uyo. To test for internal consistency
a reliability test was conducted with 20 librarians who were not part of the sample size but
from the mother population and a reliability coefficient of .89 was obtained. Data obtained
from administrating the questionnaire were statistically treated with Pearson Product Moment
Correlation for the research questions and research hypotheses. All the hypotheses were tested
at 0.05 significance level. Finding shows that Librarians’ transformational and transactional
leadership styles have significant relationship with staff productivity in Federal University
libraries of South-South Nigeria. It was concluded that librarians’ transactional leadership
style have been seen as strongly related with staff productivity in Federal Universities in Southsouth Nigeria, Hence the study recommended among others that Professional Librarians
should allow other librarian to know exactly what are the expectation from them as they will
feel productive in reaching clearly defined goals and objectives.