Renewed Agenda Research Articles

The University in the 1990s: Crisis or Predicament?

The financial difficulties which our universities are currently encountering are not without precedent, as a brief retrospective look at conditions in the 1930s will attest. However, the "decision space " in which we must operate today is far more circumscribed than at any time in the past. External constraints continue to increase in number and severity; the contemporary academic culture has greatly weakened old institutional values and identities; and governance structures have become inordinately complex, cumbersome, and ill-adapted to deal with existing realities. In these circumstances, strident demands for "greater accountability " and "stronger leadership " cannot really be met. It is imperative that we not only address certain pressing problems but also identify several genuine system contradictions, which cannot be evaded and sooner or later must be resolved. Any credible agenda for renewal must be based on new paradigms of participation and models of governance, that will enable us to create patterns of decision-making far more suited to cope with emerging realities than the outmoded forms embedded in our current systems.

Clinton Era Dawns Bringing New Players and A New Game Plan

President-elect Bill Clinton takes control of the throttle of government this week with perhaps the most ambitious agenda for national renewal since the New Deal years of the 1930s. In field after field—environment, health care, energy, housing, jobs and the quality of the workplace, education, manufacturing, and technology policy—the team that will take office this week is primed to contribute something new to governance. The times certainly seem to call for that, and a cautious U.S. electorate— which gave Clinton only 43% of its vote—is expecting it. Clinton and his running mate, Sen. Al Gore, campaigned on the theme of change, of putting people first, of renewing the economic and technology base of the country. It is, to put it mildly, Clinton's chance of a lifetime to lead—a chance he had been seeking practically all his adult life. And it is Gore's opportunity to put his ideas on energy, environment, and science and technology policy ...

Toward the Reinvigoration of the Vocational Realm of Counseling Psychology

The primary objectives of this article are to summarize the current status of the vocational realm of counseling psychology and to present some ideas for a renewed agenda for vocational psychology. As reflected in various surveys and position papers, the professional interests and skills of counseling psychologists seem to be shifting away from career-related activities. The implications of this trend are detailed and a set of proposals for the reinvigoration of the vocational realm of counseling psychology is provided

Part One: Get Innovative or Get Dead

The corporate renewal agenda for the nineties is staggering, from quality and service to teams, information technology, and time-based shuffle. Yet it is the failure to fundamentally innovate that caused, among other things, almost 50 percent of the Fortune 500 to fall off that hallowed list in the 1990s. This is the second half of a two-part article (the first half appeared in CMR, Vol. 33, No. 1, Fall 1990). It describes radical approaches, necessary in the author's view, for putting innovation atop the corporate agenda—starting with what he calls violent market injection strategies.

Decline, New Demands, and Quality: The Context for Renewal

In the past five years, extensive attention in higher education has been focused on economic and enrollment decline—its nature, consequences, and institutional responses. Yet, little attention has been given to the long-term consequences of decline and to the question of how institutions prevent resource constraints and decline from becoming organizational stagnation. Drawing on findings from research in other settings and higher education’s experience to date, an organizational development agenda for institutional renewal under such conditions is suggested.