Page 139 - JOURNAL OF LIBRARY SCIENCE IN CHINA 2018 Vol. 44

138 Journal of Library Science in China, Vol.10, 2018

finance. Performance of county level libraries represents not only an institutional issue but also a
system issue. Therefore, a policy solution of establishing management and institutional innovation
as an important driving force to speed up reform and development of libraries should be adopted in
order to achieve transformation from the investment-driven mode to the management innovation-
drive mode.
First, at the micro management level, corporate governance structure with the council as the
center should be improved. Corporate governance structure of public institutions is an institutional
arrangement governing allocation and balancing of power and interests among decision-making,
executive and supervision levels as well as other stakeholders of public institutions. It comprises of
three components: corporate governance structure, governance rules and supervision mechanism.
However, in current practices of reforming public institutions, almost all cultural institutions
are constructed as “advisory bodies” . In 2011, the state issued the Guidance on Speeding
〇a ①
Up Reform of Public Institutions by Classification to move forward the reform to separate
government functions from institution management and separate governance from operation in
order to establish corporate autonomy of public institutions. In September 2017, seven central
departments, including the CPC Department of Publicity and the Ministry of Culture jointly
issued the Implementation Plan for Speeding Up Reform of Corporate Governance Structure of
Public Cultural Institutions, proposing that a corporate governance structure with the council as
the main decision-making body shall be basically established by the end of 2020, with the aim of
establishing and improving decision-making, execution and supervision mechanisms. To achieve
this reform objective, efforts must be made to reform the framework of the “department-unit”
system and grant grassroots cultural units with the status of relatively independent players. Reform
achievements are demonstrated at the grassroots level, but the reform must start from the macro
“department-unit” administration system.
Second, at the macro level, the organizational structure centered on “fruit structure” or “fruit-
tree structure” must be reconstructed in order to support the reform of corporate governance
structure at the micro level. In terms of the system of the cultural sector, micro-level reform can
be hardly carried out or speeded up without minimal supportive reform at the macro level. At the
level of state macro management system, the current system featuring the “tree structure” or the
“tree-fruit structure” based on the idea of “separation of the same rights” should be transformed
into the “fruit structure” or the “fruit-tree structure” based on the idea of “separation of different
rights” (Yang & Zhou, 1999; Pan, 1992). In terms of practices of public cultural construction, the
system of the sector featuring the organization form of “tree structure” cannot fully meet demand
for individualized and diversified cultural development and innovative risk management in the

① In accordance with the survey of “Cultural Front” launched by Wuhan University from 2016 to 2017, there has yet been a
successful case on the reform of corporate governance structure of grassroots cultural institutions. All the councils established at
grassroots cultural institutions area actually advisory bodies, rather than decision-making or supervision and evaluation bodies. This
shows that under the current framework of “departments-units”, reform of grassroots cultural institutions can only remain at the
level of institutional innovation if without minimal reform synergy at the macro management system level.