Beyond Hierarchy, Not Beyond Responsibility: Ethical Leadership in a Role‑Based Academic Library

Academic libraries are operating in an environment characterized by technological acceleration, social change and increasing political and economic uncertainty. At the same time, they face rapidly evolving user expectations, growing resource constraints, the need to develop new competencies, shifts in service portfolios and a shortage of specialized professionals. These conditions require libraries to rethink not only what they do, but also how they organize themselves to remain resilient, effective, and sustainable. Against this background, the University Library of the ZHAW Zurich University of Applied Sciences began a transformation towards agile ways of working five years ago, with the explicit goal of placing people (users and staff) as well as innovation and leadership at the center of organizational development. Building on this foundation, the library worked intensively throughout 2024 on the design and implementation of a role‑based circle model (inspired by holacracy and sociocracy). This organizational approach replaces traditional hierarchical structures with clearly defined roles, distributed decision‑making authority, and interdisciplinary collaboration across former departmental boundaries — while remaining attentive to critiques and limits of holacracy‑style models. The transformation combined bottom‑up and top‑down approaches to foster participation and acceptance while maintaining strategic coherence. Since June 2025, the university library has been organized according to a role‑based circle model. Following a six‑month pilot phase (June–December 2025), the transformation process and the degree to which its objectives have been achieved will be jointly evaluated in early 2026 through a structured feedback process. This evaluation will form the basis for evidence‑based adjustments and further development of the model. The objectives of the transformation include increasing transparency regarding roles and responsibilities; strengthening organizational and individual performance; fostering interprofessional collaboration and breaking down silo thinking. Central to these aims is strengthening the organization’s capacity to anticipate, absorb, and respond rapidly to changing conditions to sustain innovation and high performance in an increasingly uncertain environment. To support this, decision‑making is shifted closer to where relevant expertise resides, enabling faster and more context‑sensitive responses to emerging challenges. Even within a self‑organizing model, staff require clear orientation and reliability. Leadership therefore shifts from operational decision‑making toward setting frameworks, designing governance structures and cultivating organizational culture. While formal leadership remains legally accountable for areas such as budgets, personnel, compliance, and crisis management, subject‑specific decisions are increasingly embedded in clearly defined roles and processes. This experience‑based contribution analyses the transformation of the ZHAW University Library and offers practice‑oriented insights into challenges, successes, and lessons learned. I am going to reflect critically on the competencies required for such a shift, emphasizing that self‑organization, decision‑making capacity and constructive conflict management must be developed and supported through psychological safety. With a focus on leadership, governance, and organizational resilience, this contribution addresses practitioners planning or implementing role‑based or agile organizational models in academic libraries. References Bernstein, E., Bunch, J., Canner, N., & Lee, M. (2016). Beyond the holacracy HYPE. Harvard Business Review, 94(7/8), 38–49. Kets De Vries, M. F. R. (2025). The path to individual and organizational transformation: Confronting the elephant in the room. Springer Nature Switzerland. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-88330-9 Meyer, C. R., Cohen, D. G., & Nair, S. (2017). Some have to, and some want to: Why firms adopt a post‑industrial form. Journal of Management & Governance, 21(2), 533–559. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10997-016-9353-5 Moreira, M. E. (2017). The agile enterprise. Apress. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-2391-8 Rau, T. (2020). Sociocracy – basic concepts and principles. Available online at https://www.sociocracyforall.org/sociocracy/