Building dynamic capabilities of an academic library: A research agenda

Though academic libraries do not compete with others in the real sense, every ambitious librarian would want his or her library to be better than the others. How would a librarian be able to achieve this? Traditionally, librarians have focused on building excellence in processes and operations. However, such processes and operations can be imitated and implemented by other libraries, resulting in those competencies being short lived. Researchers in strategic management have developed theories on how organizations can build competencies that cannot be imitated, and thus be ahead of their competitors. One such theory - referred to as the dynamic capabilities - is adapted to identify the micro-foundations including the roles, activities and competencies required to build these capabilities for academic libraries. Four themes - searching & sensing, shaping, seizing, and transforming - related to developing dynamic capabilities of academic libraries have been identified. Potential research questions have also been formulated to direct future research.