professional association: Some basics, The

Pemberton, J Michael

In the development and advancement of any profession, including records and information management, the role of the professional association is unquestionably a primary force. No single practitioner can, acting alone, enlarge the status or importance of the profession further than the impact of his or her work in a given workplace or community. John Doe, for example, may be the best records manager the XYZ Company ever had, but that alone will not raise one by one iota the status of records management as a field or profession in the eyes of Doe's associates. Nor will Doe's brilliance by itself define the nature and importance of records management to the larger society. To accomplish these tasks--and many more of importance to the field --Doe and his fellow practitioners must join their efforts under the banner of an association. And, in essence, that is the purpose of the professional association: to see beyond narrow self-interest, "to band together to perform social functions which [practitioners] cannot perform in their separate capacity as individuals." In the U.S., such associations are part of one million non-profit organizations.

There are three principal types of associations: cause or advocacy associations, trade associations, and professional associations. Cause associations are characterized by efforts to raise money and disseminate public information about a specific issue. Health associations, such as the American Heart Association and the American Cancer Society, which fight specific diseases and support their victims' needs, exemplify cause-driven and philanthropic associations. The trade association focuses on the economic interests of its members with a secondary, yet sincere, interest in society's needs (e.g. product information, standards, safety; fair pricing; environmental issues). Trade associations exist principally for the promotion of a type of product or service, and its members are often corporate rather than individual. The relationship, for example, between the Association for Information and Image Management (AIIM) and imaging technologies exemplifies the trade association's focus. There are professional members of AIIM, but AIIM is primarily a trade association. The professional association, our concern here, focuses on three areas: the interest of its individual members (e.g. education, information, compensation), the needs of the profession itself (e.g. definition, image, boundaries with other fields, performance standards, research, recruitment to the field), and to the larger society (e.g. protection of the needs of citizens within the profession's domain; relations with governments, universities, local communities; and relations with other similar fields). The Association of Records Managers and Administrators, Inc. (ARMA International) is primarily a professional association, one which has some trade/vendor members.

Even among the established professions, there are many differences (e.g. ages of the fields, numbers of practitioners, societal status, and standards for education and performance). In the most mature of professional fields, such as law and medicine, the practitioners consider that they are first members of the profession and secondly employees of a particular institution or organization. Professionals in newer fields, however, may not yet have the strength to achieve such autonomy, and so the professional associations in such cases find themselves supporting the needs of the industry at large as well as the interests of individual practitioners. Because they have corporate rather than individual clients, it is not yet clear as to the extent records managers think of themselves as employees of a particular organization or as autonomous members of a profession called "records management."

In terms of its activities, professional associations have been found to invest most of their time--and money--in fourteen functional areas:

* Administration and fund-raising

* Educational programs

* Community service

* Conventions

* Public information

* Setting performance and safety standards

* Research and statistics

* Political education

* Setting ethical standards

* Setting professional standards

* Certifying professional standards

* Certifying performance standards

* Enforcing ethical standards

* Accreditation (of educational programs)(2)

Among these functions, different associations will have varying priorities. Every association, however, should be involved in each area to some extent since, together, they encompass the broad role of the professional association.

WHO ARE WE?

While it may not be very visible, one of the professional association's most important functions is that of strategically defining the nature and scope of the field and then maintaining hospitable boundaries with adjacent fields. For example, ARMA International would be the only body through which records management as a field might logically be defined. Unfortunately, comprehensive definitions of "records management" or "records and information management" have changed little in the last twenty years even though the field has materially changed in several ways. Maintaining a clear and meaningful definition of the professional field-and adjusting it to changing circumstances-is important because practitioners, teachers, students, and employers must all have a common understanding of what constitutes the field. Only through shared understanding can there be shared expectations within those activities for which a records manager is responsible. Among other things, such a definition will affect recruitment to the field, an additional responsibility of the professional association. The definition will also influence textbooks, public presentations, job descriptions and, perhaps, public understanding. Using an effective definition of the field and a taxonomy of its functional domain, the association--and only the association--is in a position to carry on dialogues with related associations, to find intersections of interest on which to build joint projects and programs, and to maintain such positive relations among related fields that "turf wars" do not break out.

As an extension of its responsibility for defining the field, the professional association is the keeper of the profession's image. If the public, or general, perception of records managers is that they are little more than "file clerks,' it is the responsibility of the association to undertake public education programs. Focusing on the perceptions of senior managers alone can never be enough; the larger social value and functional (managerial) roles of the field's practitioners must become far widely understood and appreciated. Otherwise, each successive generation of senior managers must be "educated" anew, and the virtually invisible field of records management will have no continuing and meaningful point of contact with the general public. It is only after the association has done its public information job effectively that there can be ongoing recruitment efforts and demands for higher status and recognition. If the association is not working constantly to extend the horizon of the field toward the larger community, it will find it more difficult to attract new practitioners and, as a consequence, new association members.

While a professional association is not a "club," it serves some valuable social functions for its members. The association serves as a focal point for those who are like-minded and have similar employment. Those who do similar work tend to have similar interests, skills, values, and ethics. Thus, local chapter meetings, regional and international conferences, as well as the work of the association's boards and committees, provide opportunities to network, to share personal experiences, to exchange similar-t or even contested-views on topics of common professional interest, and to reinforce their professional identities. The association also provides a forum to address the means by which the field may build bridges to the needs and concerns of larger societal groups and, in so doing, define its value beyond a single workplace.

I have, in a previous column, touched on the continuing need for standards of performance and for excellence in records and information management.(3) While it may be difficult and even awkward to do so, the development and enforcement of standards of professional performance are among the professional association's most important roles. Informed professionals will know better than laypeople or one's works place associates what levels of performance are possible and should be expected. Setting standards for education, certification or licensing, and continuing education requirements is a vital service--developed and maintained through the association --for those who employ a field's practitioners as well as for the field as a whole. The association, then, since it consists of professionals and is, hopefully, led by the best of them, must take responsibility for developing and helping enforce professional-wide performance. (Note the large incidence of standards-related functions in the list above of professional-association functions.) Such qualitative, and possibly quantitative, standards cannot, of course, remain static; it is the association which must assume the difficult task of leading an ongoing, demanding, and self-critical process to keep professional standards at the highest reasonable level. Without doubt, there is a relationship between rigorous established standards and the credibility and status which the field of records management seeks. No standards, no status.

THE SILENT REVOLUTIONS

Among the professional association's most important services to its members are those of information and education. The more the field's practitioners know about theory and technique, the greater their perceived competence, the greater their skill in delivering services to clients, and the greater their overall value to their profession. Knowledge and information that leads to knowledge, then, are the keys to any practitioner's livelihood regardless of the field. Research-based knowledge, properly disseminated, leads to improved practice, to perfecting older techniques, and to learning newer ones. But how is that knowledge developed and disseminated to practitioners?

Providing current, credible, and usable information that members may apply in their professional lives is an increasingly vital role of professional associations. Here, it must be the professional association that encourages, funds, monitors, and, frequently, publishes the research that enlarges the field's knowledge base. Sociologist Robert K. Merton put it ably:

...a profession is committed to the task of enlarging the body of knowledge that it applies to the problems and troubles with which it deals. A profession not rooted in systematic knowledge is a self-contradiction, a myth rather than a reality....The provision of research personnel and resources is one of the great requirements of a profession. No professional has ever advanced rapidly without including people who devote all or part of their time to methodological investigation....The silent revolutions in all the professions have come about as the results, primarily, of knowledge enlarged through research.(4)

Without sponsored research, then, the development of new and credible knowledge in the field would be snail-like at best. The lack of persistent, supported, and disseminated research efforts has kept the knowledge base of records and information management from progressing much beyond the early research findings of Emmet J. Leahy in the 1940s and 1950s.(5)

Such research-based information would form the foundation for any profession's educational programs. Here, too, the professional association has an important role in setting standards for the level of education of the field's practitioners (e.g. undergraduate or graduate degrees), the length of the formal training period (e.g. three years for law and four for the medical degree), the courses required, and faculty credentials. It is at the college or university level that preparations for the professions now occurs and where a novice's knowledge base is initially formed.

Knowledge gone stale, however, reflects badly on the public image of the field, not merely on the feckless practitioner alone. Whether or not it is the primary provider of continuing education and whether or not there is a formal certification and certification maintenance program, the professional association also plays a role in setting and reviewing requirements for the continuing education of professionals in the field. To represent the best interests of the field, the professional association must keep up the pressure for high standards in personnel recruitment, in the education--formal and continuing--of novices, in research, and in practice. What group, if not the professional association members, has the collective influence and resources to handle such tasks?

Increasing concerns in the workplace about conflicts between profits and social responsibility and between competitiveness and integrity have led to a new focus on ethics. To some extent practitioners in a given field must themselves sort out their personal values, but only the professional association can be responsible for defining and explaining in operational terms the ethical norms of the field. Such norms will cover relationships between the practitioner and clients, between practitioners themselves, and between the field and the larger society. Here associations invest in ongoing efforts to produce and maintain a code of ethics or professional responsibility. It is also the association which must develop educational activities to make those ethical standards come to life for current and future practitioners, as well as those who educate and hire them.

ON THE WRONG TRACK?

Within the category "professional associations" there seem to be two prevailing philosophies which characterize such organizations: those associations which focus on the needs of practitioners in that field represented by the association and, in the other direction, those associations which stress the well-being of the association itself as an organization and view members' needs as secondary. This is an important distinction. If the association is diligent in its roles of education, informing, representing, and furthering the economic interests of its members-as-practitioners, then it follows that satisfied practitioners-as-members will see that the association itself will stay healthy. Common sense suggests, however, that the reverse is not true. That is, an association whose primary interest is in its own continued vitality as an organization may actually harm the welfare of the practitioners through neglecting their interests in favor of its own. Here the members of a profession should rightly hold their association accountable: "What are you doing, day in and day out, to improve the lot of those in this field?" If the answers concentrate on, say, more computers, more floor space, more staff at the national headquarters, it is time to step back and reevaluate the association's mission, to give a reality check to what it does versus what it says it does. Also, if the majority of the activities of the association's board are about making the association per se more effective, more visible, and more financially healthy--and not on the needs of the practitioner members--it is time to question the board's direction. Something is also quite wrong when an association seems unable to understand that its members are practitioners of a profession in which ongoing, persistent work issues come first and association needs are secondary.

EXCELLENCE IN ASSOCIATIONS

Like other types of organizations, associations have become caught up in the push for increased quality of services and performance. Below is a list of fifty indicators of excellence in association management as compiled from the ideas of twelve leaders in association management and published in a 1991 issue of Association Management, published by the American Society of Association Executives (ASAE). According to the ASAE experts, a first-rate association:

1. Has a clear and specific understanding of why it exists and what it is trying to accomplish, a clear vision of where it wants to go, and a system that evaluates and adjusts that understanding as necessary on a periodic basis. All members and relevant "others" clearly understand that mission.

2. Constantly questions how it can accomplish its mission more effectively and focuses on projects critical to its mission. The business community refers to this as "niche marketing." The first-class association has found its niche and strives to fill it.

3. Has a compelling vision of the future that is shared by members and staff. It knows what it wants to be in the next 5-10 years and anticipates and prepares for future trends.

4. Maintains a big-picture focus while excelling at the "how-to" of service delivery.

5. Establishes and meets challenging goals. It communicates regularly to membership and staff the progress made toward achieving goals.

6. Views programmatic and organizational success as a new vantage point from which to achieve even greater success rather than rest on its laurels. The mind-set is on never-ending improvement.

7. Is managed in a professional, business-like manner, utilizing long- and short-range planning, sound financial management, marketing, and communication.

8. Has a system that captures all available fiscal resources, which enables it to pursue its mission's goals in as timely a manner as available resources will allow.

9. Has identified the universe of potential members or donors and makes significant progress in penetrating that market.

10. Has an open-door membership policy with only those restrictions required by its stated purpose and the law.

11. Reaches out to include members of minority groups in its work.

12. Has a strong, competent staff-volunteer leadership team made up of the best talent available in the industry, profession, or interest groups.

13. Has structure and operating philosophy that maximizes the ability of the elected leadership and the professional staff to combine their respective skills and work effectively together in pursuit of the association's goals.

14. Provides fresh input and perspectives via periodic changes in the voluntary leadership.

15. Has an effective system that identifies and subsequently develops and orients current and future volunteer leaders. Current leaders are involved as role models and mentors to future leaders.

16. Has a governance structure capable of reacting to a rapidly changing environment--on behalf of the association itself and on behalf of its members.

17. Manages its governance and decision-making through innovative structures designed for swift and effective response and re-organizes its structure when it is effective to do so.

18. Has a board of directors that delegates as much as possible, with adequate controls, in order to concentrate its wisdom on policy issues. The board makes its decisions based on adequate input from both members (especially committees) and staff.

19. Has communication vehicles that capture member's attention and allow for member input to the decision-making process.

20. Responds so effectively to the needs of its members that they cannot conceive of the association not existing.

21. Is held in high regard by its membership-at-large , by its smallest and largest members, by its current and former elected leaders, as well as by the media, educators and public officials who are critical to achieving its objectives.

22. Has clearly defined roles for volunteer leaders and staff that maximize the contribution each individual is capable of providing.

23. Touches members personally so they feel connected to one another, to their industry or profession, and to the greater community.

24. Has adequate professional staff support to ensure that human and fiscal resources are used to their best advantage in carrying out its mission.

25. Has implemented a program of incentives that challenges staff professionals and administrative personnel and rewards them for achievements in predetermined areas of importance based upon a sound method of evaluating performance on an ongoing basis.

26. Has physical facilities adequate to conduct the work of the association and that reflect well on the image of the organization and its members.

27. Fosters a learning community within the membership and helps members become more effective and knowledgeable in their professional capacities.

28. Encourages and supports its staff in the pursuit of professional development and career advancement.

29. Deals constructively with conflict.

30. Devotes the greater portion of its resources to dealing with external issues of concern to members.

31. Sorts out and coordinates the special interests of segments of its membership that may disagree on its direction or priorities.

32. Demonstrates concern about the impact its programs and activities may have on the greater society in which it exists and exploits opportunities to contribute to the public welfare.

33. Engages in effective communication that conveys the interests of its members and reflects sensitivity to the impact of those interests of society at large.

34. Communicates in such a way that it enlists, whenever possible, the support of the general public, government, and relevant media in carrying out its mission.

35. Has superior financial controls along with exemplary financial policies and internal practices that ensure proper management of the organization's funds.

36. Works effectively with organizations that have similar or overlapping interests in a manner that avoids duplication of efforts and resources and capitalizes on the increased strengths afforded by collaboration.

37. Demonstrates a dedication to excellence in customer/member service.

38. Abides by all relevant legal and regulatory requirements, and goes beyond the letter of the law by anticipating and responding to the spirit of the law.

39. Takes the high ethical road in all of its dealings with staff, members, and the community at large.

40. Actively supports and participates in organizations designed to enhance and promote volunteerism.

41. Recognizes its place in the international environment, and takes advantage of all relevant opportunities for international cooperation and collaboration.

42. Encourages creativity and rewards risk-taking.

43. Exudes excitement and energy, drawing members in and encouraging their participation.

44. Is in the right place at the right time with the right people carrying the right message.

45. Cares about being effective even more than being efficient.

46. Knows what kind of recognition motivates both members and staff.

47. Reflects through its staff and volunteer leaders a strong respect for the human dignity of every individual, regardless of position, income, color, race, or sex.

48. Has an arsenal of documents and systems that make it possible to adapt quickly to change, to pinpoint responsibilities, and to prevent whenever possible, "re-inventing the wheel." Every effort is made to reduce unnecessary bureaucracy.

49. Strives for quality and excellence in every facet of its work.

50. Acts with integrity, a high order of ethics that defines associations far better than any rhetoric.

On the other hand, a first-class association IS NOT:

1. One that values tradition for tradition's sake.

2. One that allows its decision-making and governance structures to stifle creativity or stall necessary action.

3. One that executes programs and services well but without a clue to where the association is ultimately headed.

4. One that focuses solely on the immediate self-interest of the members.

5. One that is threatened by questions such as "Why are we doing this?"

6. One that basks in its fleeting glory without a thought to the future.

7. One that is satisfied with the status quo.

8. One where staff and volunteers do not work in tandem and have little respect for one another, as reflected in the attitude: "I could get my work done if it weren't for the members and the staff."(6)

REFERENCES

1. The Value of Associations to American Society: A Report by the Hudson. Institute (Washington, DC: American Society of Association Executives and the Foundation of the American Society of Association Executives, 1990), p. 2.

2. The Value of Associations to American Society, p. 25.

3. "Looking for 'Excellence in Records Management'," Records Management Quarterly, 27, iv(1993), p. 62.

4. "Issues in the Growth of a Profession," in ANA Proceedings, June 10, 1958, p. 297.

5. J. Michael Pemberton, "Emmet Leahy: Patron Saint of Records Management," Records Management Quarterly, 27, ii (1993), 56-59.

6. Quoted, with permission, from: Elissa M. Myers, "To Be the Best," Association Management, 43, i (1991), 55-59.

OTHER RESOURCES

Assessing Your Strengths and Weaknesses: A Workbook for Evaluating Your Association. Washington, DC: American Society of Association Executives, 1988.

Butler, Wilford A. and Heidi H. Bowers, eds. Attracting, Organizing and Keeping Members. Washington, DC: the American Society of Association Executives, 1990.

"Charting a History of Professionalism," Canadian Datasystems, 21, xi(1989), 55-56.

Merton, Robert K. "The Functions of the Professional Associations," The American Journal of Nursing, 58, 1(1958), 50-54; rpt. in Issues in Nursing, eds. Bonnie Bullough and Vern Bullough (New York: Springer Publishing, 1966), 77-87.

--"The Search for Professional Status: Sources, Costs, and Consequences," The American Journal of Nursing, 60, v (1960), 662-664.

--"Some Thoughts on the Professions in American Society," Brown University Papers, XXXVIII, Address Before the Graduate Convocation, Brown University, June 6, 1960, pp. 1-17.

Mignini, Paul J., Jr. "Associations Are Even More Valuable During Recessions," Business Credit, 94, iv (April 1992), 3-4.

Principles of Association Management. Second Edition. Washington, DC: American Society of Association Executives, 1988.

Rodenhauser, Paul. "The Life Cycles of Professional Associations: Organizational and Administrative Dynamics," Administration and Policy in Mental Health, 18, vi (1991), 411-420.

"The Time Has Come to Re-Engineer Our Association" [the Association for Systems Management], Journal of Systems Management, 43, vi (1992), 38-40.

Copyright Association of Records Managers Administrators Inc. Jan 1994
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