Abstract
In the field of urban planning, a well-established and growing body of discourse encourages reconsideration of stakeholder theory. Like urban planning, librarianship has been using stakeholder theory nearly since the theory’s inception, with its prevalence accelerating since the mid-1990s. However, compared to planning, librarianship’s use of stakeholder theory has been undertheorized; in three decades, there have not been meaningful advances or critiques of stakeholder theory’s place in library management. This article will review the advent of stakeholder theory in the business management literature; distill urban planning’s criticism of the theory and ideas for moving past it; and suggest what from urban planning’s critique of stakeholder theory can be adopted in librarianship’s theory and practice. As in urban planning, these new directions for librarianship will be oriented towards democracy and justice. It will also suggest that library workers examine critically the suite of managerial methods borrowed from commerce and reconsider the kinds of scholarship we produce about library management.
Recommended Citation
Taylor, J.
(2026).
Right to the Library: Following Urban Planning Away from Stakeholder Theory.
Urban Library Journal,
32
(1).
DOI: https://doi.org/10.68684/1944-9682.1272
Included in
Library and Information Science Commons, Nonprofit Administration and Management Commons