| Membership Approves Changes to the IAPRI By-Laws The IAPRI Membership has approved the Board of Directors proposed changes to the By-Laws. With no negatives votes the revised IAPRI By-Laws became effective on November 6, 2021. Here is a link to the new By-Laws: IAPRI By-Laws Adopted November 6 2021 Summary of Changes:
Explanation: These changes were necessitated by four factors. One was the board’s desire to change the IAPRI Presidency to a one three-year term of office as President and add another three-year term as Immediate Past President. This brings fresh ideas and thought, but also preserve the knowledge and experience on the board. A second factor was the need to modify how the total number of Corporate Member directors who sit on the board is described. This was required because we changed the definition of Full Member to be include both institutional and corporate types. We also needed to change the verbiage related to the maximum corporate directors from a percentage to a fix number of four. Using a percentage could require a change in the number depending on how many total directors were currently on the board. The minimum number of directors is changed from 9 to 12 to accommodate the desired ratio of institutional and corporate directors on the board. The third change eliminated the concept of a Leadership Committee involved in seeking candidates for board as a requirement. The board in the future can create a committee or just serve that function itself. The fourth factor requiring a by-law change was that on August 19, 2021, the IAPRI Board of Directors amended the Operating Policies changing the name of Working Groups to Communities of Practice. This is a relatively new conceptualized concept even though the phenomenon it refers to is age-old. Communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly. The actual definition of a Working Group is a small group of people that studies a particular problem or situation and then reports on what it has discovered and gives suggestions. A group of experts working together to achieve specified goals. This is not really the mission of our current working groups. So, the board changed their names to Community of Practice. In the Operating Policies, most of the changes were simply changing the title of "working group" to "community of practice" or "working groups" to "communities of practice". Published: 11/06/21 |