But in a rural environment some features of the behavioural pattern are so strange that one is tempted to think
that the staff are stereotypes. In such circumstances, an alert manager has to pause to ask questions and find
some explanation for the idiosyncratic attitudes displayed by staff. The most conspicuous feature is the "son of
the soil" syndrome. Staff members feel strongly that simply because the university is sited on their land, it
automatically becomes their property. If their thinking were to be in a positive direction in this regard, one would
expect them to truly treat the university library as their own by contributing significantly to its development, by
maximising their productivity, by coming to work punctually, by putting in extra hours whenever the need arises,
and by setting other good examples to the non-indigenous. But, alas, the exact opposite is what has been
observed in this study.