Ethics: Round #?

from Jack Jacoby

On or about October 9th, I sent a mailing to all 1,367 U.S. and Canadian ACR members of record as of April 1997. Included in the packet were two copies of a straw ballot on whether to have a re-vote on ACR's Mission Statement (a goldenrod copy to be completed and sent to Keith Hunt and a green copy to be sent to Dr. Gerald Koocher, editor of Ethics and Behavior) as well as a questionnaire on ethics. Because recipients came across these items only after a 26 page letter and ten other multi-page enclosures, I've been informed that these items could easily be overlooked. Despite this, as of November 9th, a total of 95 green ballots (7%) had been returned to Dr. Gerald Koocher and 184 questionnaires (13.5%) returned to the Princeton Research & Consulting Center. (Conceivably, a greater number of the goldenrod ballots were returned to Keith Hunt.) While higher return rates were anticipated and more would be appreciated, what was obtained still exceeds the (79 out of all 1,785 members =) 4.4% return rate obtained by the ACR Board in response to its March 1997 call for members to vote on the Mission Statement. After subtracting the two green ballots returned with comments but no vote, the results of the straw ballot were as follows:

The straw vote -- which essentially amounts to a petition of ACR's governance by some appreciable number of members -- raises the following question: In the face of such a request, what procedures does (or should) ACR have in place that would require a reconsideration of and/or re-vote on the matter? Given that ACR's governance was established to be responsive to the needs of the membership, this question merits our serious consideration.

Response from the 1997 ACR Board of Directors

The 1997 ACR Board of Directors discussed Jack Jacoby's letter in a conference call on December 12. Participating were: John Lynch, President; Debbie John, Past-President; John Sherry, President-Elect; Kim Corfman, Treasurer; Dipankar Chakravarti, Director-Academic; Kathy Jocz, Director-Industry; Alan Levy, Director-Government; Keith Hunt, Executive Secretary. The Board remains comfortable with the process for drafting and voting the mission statement. But the 1997 Board believes strongly that it should be possible for future boards to amend any provision in the mission statement if that is the will of the membership; we need better procedures for knowing when to do so.

We agreed that the 1998 Board should take two steps in response to the input discussed in Jack Jacoby's letter.

First, we will make this an agenda item for the meeting of the 1998 Board of Directors on Thursday, October 1 before the North American conference in Montreal. We encourage members to arrange their travel plans to come to the meeting to express their views. We will schedule the discussion late enough in the afternoon that interested members can attend without having to fly in Wednesday to participate. If you are unable to attend but would like to express your views to the Board, please contact the Board members directly. The 1998 Board will be comprised of: John Sherry, President; John Lynch, Past-President; Joe Alba, President Elect; Barbara Stern, Treasurer; Mike Houston, Director-Academic; Alan Levy, Director-Government; Kathy Jocz, Director-Industry; Keith Hunt, Executive Secretary. Please see the ACR World Headquarters page on the ACR News website (www.acr-news.org) for e-mail links to ACR board members.

Second, we will try to encourage members to exprss their views and try to create forums outside of the October Board meeting for ACR members to discuss as a community the mission statement or its ethics provisions. We encourage members to use the ACR-L Listserv for this purpose, and we are looking at the possibility of having an "open microphone" special session at ACR to discuss ACR's ethics statement, the mission statement, or any issues of ACR governance that members would like to debate.

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