Assessing the entrepreneurial orientation of the librarians : A case study of Iranian public libraries

Purpose The purpose of this study is to carry out the demographic evaluation and analysis of the entrepreneurial orientation of librarians in Iranian public libraries using the Lumpkin and Dess model. Design/methodology/approach In this study, a structured questionnaire of entrepreneurial orientation was used. The research population consisted of 5,000 librarians of Iranian public libraries who were selected using Krejcie and Morgan table (95% confidence level and p -value of 5%) and stratified the random sampling method. A total of 365 individuals were selected as the study sample. Data were analyzed by SPSS software using descriptive statistics (frequency, percent, mean, standard deviation and standard error mean) as well as inferential statistics (Pearson correlation, one-sample t -test, independent samples t -test and ANOVA. Findings The results showed that the mean level of entrepreneurial orientation of librarians was 2.92 with an average level ( µ = 3). Librarians were at an average level ( µ = 3) in terms of components of innovativeness (2.98), risk-taking (2.93) and proactiveness (3.02). The status of the autonomy component (2.53) was at an undesirable level (3 < µ ), and only the competitive aggressiveness status (3.12) was at the desirable level (3 < µ ). The analysis of the librarian’s entrepreneurial orientation based on demographic characteristics indicated that the male librarian’s entrepreneurial orientation was higher than the female librarian’s ( p -value = 0.039). Meantime, librarians with library and information science degrees have less entrepreneurial orientation than the librarians with other (non-librarian and information science) degrees ( p -value = 0.01). Also, the higher the librarian’s degree, the lower their entrepreneurial orientation will be ( p -value = 0.000). In addition, there was no significant relationship between librarians’ age ( p -value = 0.14), marital status ( p -value = 0.15) or work experience ( p -value = 0.388) and their entrepreneurial orientation. Practical implications Entrepreneurial orientation is one of the significant concepts in entrepreneurship of organizations. Accordingly, studying the concept of entrepreneurial orientation and formulating an appropriate strategy is of great importance in improving the performance of libraries because libraries can be more useful and appealing to library members by enhancing the entrepreneurial orientation of librarians, delivering new, unique and tailor-made services to users’ needs. Originality/value Not much research has been carried out on entrepreneurship in library and information sciences. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to examine the entrepreneurial orientation of librarians based on their demographic characteristics.