The APA Council of Representatives will vote in August on a final set of recommendations aimed at making the association's governance system more nimble, efficient and responsive.
The revisions were recommended as part of the Good Governance Project (GGP), an outgrowth of APA's Strategic Plan, which calls for optimizing organizational effectiveness.
APA's current governance system was designed in the mid-20th century when the organization was much smaller and its business could be sufficiently conducted with biannual council meetings. The new model was proposed after a thorough assessment with input from many member groups. It has three primary goals: nimbleness, strategic alignment across the organization and increased member engagement.
Under the new structure, APA's Board of Directors and the council each take on distinct roles: The board focuses on running the business of the association, freeing council to focus on strategic and emerging issues affecting psychology, and to engage in more thorough dialogues on key policy and strategic directions. Understanding member wants and needs will be an integral element of the deliberation process.
So far, the council has approved a plan that includes:
- Delegating APA's financial authority to the Board of Directors for a three-year trial period.
- Reconfiguring the board so that it includes members elected directly by the general membership, as well as seats for early career psychologists and students.
- Creating a Council Leadership Team to manage that group's workflow.
At its August meeting, the council will consider a final set of GGP proposals. These include a plan to give each division, state, province and territory one seat on the council and the addition of several seats for members-at-large, and student and early career representatives. The proposed changes would reduce the size of the council from 175 to 138 members.
Members will have the opportunity to vote on new bylaws language this fall to put many of these changes into place.