Abstract

This study aims to examine the effects of bureaucratic characteristics, which are the most common in modern library organizations among organizational characteristics of public libraries, on the organizational commitment of librarians. Doing this analysis, 185 librarians from 20 public libraries in the Seoul metropolitan area of South Korea were surveyed to look into the bureaucratic and post-bureaucratic characteristics of each library, such as specialization, hierarchy of authority, system of rules, integration, and participation, and the three dimensions of organizational commitment of affective commitment, continuance commitment, and normative commitment. According to this analysis, the hierarchy of authority had a negative effect on affective and normative commitment, while integration had a positive impact on affective and continuance commitment, and participation had a positive effect on affective and normative commitment. The findings, therefore, show that a combination of bureaucratic and post-bureaucratic characteristics, which reduces the hierarchy of authority and strengthens integration and participation, would increase organizational commitment. This study is meaningful in that, through empirical research, it suggests organizational bureaucratic characteristics that would raise organizational commitment in public library organizations.