The progress and development of the ILR School during the past 50 years, though sometimes uneven in both pace and direction, has largely met the promise and expectations embodied in the founding legislation.  The fulfillment of the legislative purpose testifies to the contributions of those many individuals and institutions with whom we have interacted over this period of astonishing growth in size, complexity of structure and programs, and recognized stature at home and abroad in both the academic and practitioner worlds

Lipsky, David B.

English

[Excerpt] The progress and development of the ILR School during the past 50 years, though sometimes uneven in both pace and direction, has largely met the promise and expectations embodied in the founding legislation. The fulfillment of the legislative purpose testifies to the contributions of those many individuals and institutions with whom we have interacted over this period of astonishing growth in size, complexity of structure and programs, and recognized stature at home and abroad in both the academic and practitioner worlds. Because the largest part of my professional life h a s been spent as a member of the ILR community—as undergraduate student in the school\u27s early years, as faculty member, and now, until my pending retirement in that role, as dean, in this last chapter I want to offer some observations on the school\u27s future that have been informed by this experience. Although these are personal views, I am confident that they are not unique but are shared widely among the school\u27s constituencies of faculty, students, alumni, and the external publics we have served over the years.
Although one hopes that the future of an institution such as the ILR School can be what we want it to be, it is important to recognize and acknowledge the limits of control. That is a lesson we have learned from coping with and adapting to a constantly changing environment in our 50-year history. I will not burden you with the details of that experience, but it is useful to contrast briefly the economic, social, and political environment of the school as a nascent institution in the late 1940s and 1950s and the comparable dimensions of its more recent past

Lipsky, David B

DigitalCommons@ILR

Cornell University ILR School 
DigitalCommons@ILR 
Articles and Chapters ILR Collection 
1996 
The Future Lies Ahead (With Apology to Mort Sahl) 
David B. Lipsky 
Cornell University, dbl4@cornell.edu 
Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/articles 
 Part of the Higher Education Commons, Human Resources Management Commons, Labor History 
Commons, and the Labor Relations Commons 
Thank you for downloading an article from DigitalCommons@ILR. 
Support this valuable resource today! 
This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the ILR Collection at DigitalCommons@ILR. It has been 
accepted for inclusion in Articles and Chapters by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@ILR. For more 
information, please contact catherwood-dig@cornell.edu. 
If you have a disability and are having trouble accessing information on this website or need materials in an 
alternate format, contact web-accessibility@cornell.edu for assistance. 
The Future Lies Ahead (With Apology to Mort Sahl) 
Abstract 
[Excerpt] The progress and development of the ILR School during the past 50 years, though sometimes 
uneven in both pace and direction, has largely met the promise and expectations embodied in the 
founding legislation. The fulfillment of the legislative purpose testifies to the contributions of those many 
individuals and institutions with whom we have interacted over this period of astonishing growth in size, 
complexity of structure and programs, and recognized stature at home and abroad in both the academic 
and practitioner worlds. Because the largest part of my professional life h a s been spent as a member of 
the ILR community—as undergraduate student in the school's early years, as faculty member, and now, 
until my pending retirement in that role, as dean, in this last chapter I want to offer some observations on 
the school's future that have been informed by this experience. Although these are personal views, I am 
confident that they are not unique but are shared widely among the school's constituencies of faculty, 
students, alumni, and the external publics we have served over the years. 
Although one hopes that the future of an institution such as the ILR School can be what we want it to be, 
it is important to recognize and acknowledge the limits of control. That is a lesson we have learned from 
coping with and adapting to a constantly changing environment in our 50-year history. I will not burden 
you with the details of that experience, but it is useful to contrast briefly the economic, social, and political 
environment of the school as a nascent institution in the late 1940s and 1950s and the comparable 
dimensions of its more recent past. 
Keywords 
ILR School, industrial and labor relations, history, faculty, education 
Disciplines 
Higher Education | Human Resources Management | Labor History | Labor Relations 
Comments 
Suggested Citation 
Lipsky, D. B. (1996). The future lies ahead (with apology to Mort Sahl) [Electronic version]. In E. Goldberg 
(Ed.), The ILR School at fifty: Voices of the faculty, alumni, and friends (pp. 211-215). Ithaca, NY: ILR 
Press. 
Required Publisher’s Statement 
© Cornell University Press. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved. 
This article is available at DigitalCommons@ILR: https://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/articles/796 
12. 
THE FUTURE LIES AHEAD (With 
Apology to Mort Sahl) 
by David B. Lipsky 
e progress and development of the ILR School during the past 50 years, 
though sometimes uneven in both pace and direction, has largely met the promise 
and expectations embodied in the founding legislation. The fulfillment of the 
legislative purpose testifies to the contributions of those many individuals and 
institutions with whom we have interacted over this period of astonishing growth 
in size, complexity of structure and programs, and recognized stature at home and 
abroad in both the academic and practitioner worlds. Because the largest part of 
my professional life h a s been spent as a member of t h e ILR community—as 
undergraduate student in the school's early years, as faculty member, and now, 
until my pending retirement in that role, as dean, in this last chapter I want to 
offer some observations on the school's future that have been informed by this 
experience. Although these are personal views, I am confident that they are not 
unique but are shared widely among the school's constituencies of faculty, 
students, alumni, and the external publics we have served over the years. 
Although one hopes that the future of an institution such as the ILR School 
can be what we want it to be, it is important to recognize and acknowledge the 
limits of control. That is a lesson we have learned from coping with and adapting 
to a constantly changing environment in our 50-year history. I will not burden you 
with the details of that experience, but it is useful to contrast briefly the economic, 
social, and political environment of the school as a nascent institution in the late 
1940s a n d 1950s a n d t h e comparable dimensions of i t s more recent p a s t . 
Yesterday 
Perhaps the major environmental fact of the early postwar years was the 
economic a n d political prominence of labor-management relations. The wartime 
restraints imposed on a growing labor movement—over a third of private sector 
employment was organized and merger of t h e AFL a n d t h e CIO was in t h e 
wings—and on major industries determined to slow or thwart further union 
advances were being removed at the time the school was founded. Apprehension 
in the postwar period over a possible recurrence of a major economic recession, on 
the one hand, and an equally intense concern over inflation, on the other, were 
pervasive topics of discussion in the daily press as well as the scholarly journals. 
Much of this discussion focused on the institution of collective bargaining. 
211 
m 
212 The ILR School at Fift 
Expansion of the social "safety net" established in the New Deal period, including 
eventually private as well as public programs dealing with occupational safety 
and health, was pushing the boundaries of industrial and labor relations as a field 
of study and practice well beyond their prewar range. 
The relevance of an institution such as the ILR School, accordingly, was 
manifest. The need to understand the processes involved and to train industrial 
relations practitioners, as the New York State legislature had anticipated, was 
clear. There was little difficulty in our formative years in obtaining the resources 
to develop programs both in Ithaca and in the extension centers elsewhere in the 
state. Endorsements from the then politically more influential labor movement 
and from management organizations familiar with our programs, as well as the 
reputation of Cornell, generally favored our case in the annual budget negotiations. 
Today 
The environment in which the school functions today is quite different from 
the early years. The labor movement in the United States has lost strength and 
influence. Though signs of revival are emerging, a return to the level of influence it 
enjoyed in the early years of the school remains problematic. A strong political 
movement to weaken and even roll back the social advances of the earlier years 
has achieved substantial voter approval. Public support for higher education 
generally has weakened while institutions such as ours are expected to produce 
more with relatively fewer resources. In recent years the school has suffered a 
series of relatively large cuts in state funding, forcing layoffs and early retirements 
of key support personnel. 
At the micro level, where much of our research and teaching are focused, 
there are significant developments that challenge us. Chief among them are the 
changes in the nature and organization of work, propelled by technological 
advances such as computerization at a pace even more rapid than the 
automation movement of the 1960s and 70s; the increasing globalization of 
production and employment, blurring the lines between foreign and domestic labor 
markets; the rise of the human resource management function; and the much 
discussed inequality in the distributions of income and employment opportunities. 
In sum, labor-management relations may not be quite as close to center 
stage as they were 50 years ago, but issues of the workplace and employment 
relations are, if anything, more important than they were at the time of the 
school's founding. 
In the face of these developments, some other major academic institutions 
have abandoned or downsized their industrial relations programs, or have folded 
them into other programs. At the same time, graduate or professional industrial 
relations and human resource degree programs have proliferated, usually in 
smaller colleges and with limited faculty resources. Meanwhile the ILR School 
continues to enjoy its strong reputation as the nation's leading institution for the 
The Future Lies Ahead 213 
preparation of individuals trained to make useful and important contributions to 
both the practice and study of industrial relations and human resource 
management. Applications for admission at both undergraduate and graduate 
levels continue to be strong and on a rising curve of quality. We successfully met 
out commitment to raise, as a part of Cornell's five-year capital campaign, $20.5 
million, and I believe that by that magical year 2000, when all the donor pledges 
made in the course of the campaign have been fulfilled, the school's endowment 
will very likely reach $12 million, four times its size in 1990. And, of course, well 
before that date our new building, equipped with state-of-the-art educational 
technology appropriate to our mission, will have been completed and occupied. 
Today's Challenges 
Despite all of this apparent good news, I must express my concern about our 
capacity to maintain the unique position we have attained in our field. I am 
confident we can overcome or at least adapt without major retreat from our 
original mission to the assaults on our budget and the emergence of competing 
programs. That can only happen, however, if the ILR faculty continues the 
practice of critical self-examination that has from the beginning been so essential 
to our growth and survival in the face of constantly changing environments in 
education and in our specialized field of study. The school has been able to meet 
challenges in the past because of the faculty's collective willingness to diagnose 
our problems objectively and debate proposed solutions vigorously but collegially. 
I worry that this propensity has weakened in recent years, not because of 
indifference or because of the growth (perhaps especially among younger faculty) 
of a kind of professional narcissism. In my view, it is because of two impersonal 
factors. One is the growth of specialization in the basic social science fields that 
inhibits both our knowledge and our interest in the work of colleagues outside our 
own discipline. Consequently, our ability to communicate across disciplinary lines, 
even within the school, has been weakened. The second factor is that we have 
recruited new faculty from first-rate graduate programs in basic social and 
behavioral sciences, but in which industrial and labor relations per se is not the 
core of the program. The orientation of these more recent faculty cohorts tends 
toward the home discipline, to an external reference group rather than an internal 
one. For an interdisciplinary program such as ours, the continuation of these 
developments could threaten our future, especially if they become embedded in our 
teaching and research and in our participation in public service. We could well 
become second rate, or as I said to the faculty at its first meeting of the 1995-96 
year, we could become the "last dinosaur alive." 
So I believe it is imperative that we revive the spirit of collegiality and 
commitment to the school's original and still-relevant mission through a 
continuation and strengthening of our habits of self-diagnosis, self-criticism, and 
self-healing. This may require some changes in organization, in the relationship 
between faculty and administration, for example. Basically, however, it will 
The ILR School at Fift 
require a common vision and commitment to strategic goals that will guide the 
school's programs into the new century. 
Goals I Propose 
Here are four goals that I propose can provide the framework for our future 
development. 
First, the ILR School should continue its unique interdisciplinary approach to 
the study of industrial and labor relations, but with an effort to improve the topical 
balance of its programs between domestic and international issues. Since the late 
1980s we have made excellent progress in studying and analyzing the industrial 
relations systems of other countries. Our concerted effort to "internationalize," 
however, may have diverted our attention from a number of crucial domestic 
issues. Admittedly, some of these domestic issues are related to the increased 
globalization of labor and product markets. The interplay of domestic and 
international industrial relations developments needs to be explored intensely on 
every level. I am confident that such exploration will, if pursued in an 
interdisciplinary framework, strengthen our commitment to our original mission 
while it enriches our teaching, research, and public service efforts. Our goal here 
should be nothing less t h a n leadership in t h i s essential merger of the two spheres 
of our subject matter. 
Second, the ILR School should become a leader in providing up-to-date, high-
quality training and retraining for industrial and labor relations professionals. Our 
responsibility to the field should not terminate with the graduation of well-
prepared students, as important as that is. In a world of extremely rapid 
technological, industrial, and economic change affecting job content and 
responsibility, it is no longer sufficient to entrust maintenance of professional 
competence to informal in-service or on-the-job training. Professional workers, it 
is now clear, are at least as much at risk of displacement as other workers. They 
need well-organized, quality programs to upgrade and maintain their skills. We 
have made some advance in this direction with our CAHRS and executive 
education programs. We need to expand this approach, where appropriate, to 
embrace other organizational and occupational publics that are currently 
underserved in this regard. 
Third, the school must exploit the opportunities presented by the emerging 
technologies of instruction and research in order to remain relevant and to achieve 
a world-class status in the field of industrial and labor relations. Our students and 
other constituencies that we serve are becoming increasingly sophisticated in the 
use of the computer. They are familiar with the potentialities of this tool and with 
other developments for communication and learning. A growing number of 
courses are incorporating the use of the Internet and the World Wide Web as 
instructional tools, for example, and for several years we have been experimenting 
with "distance learning." Our students and extension clients expect our programs 
to utilize these new technologies to their fullest potential; but we have not kept up 
The Future Lies Ahead 215 
to the degree necessary. Our new Catherwood Library and the new classrooms 
and laboratories will advance us toward this goal, but only if the ILR faculty itself 
upgrades its competence in the use of the new technologies. The faculty and 
administration should in the near future consider the installation of a continuing 
program of in-service training to develop and maintain faculty competence in the 
use and exploitation of new educational and communication technologies. 
Finally, to achieve the foregoing objectives we need a major change in the 
management of the school's financial resources. A series of significant cuts in 
state support and a vastly increased dependence on private sources make it 
imperative that we bring our budgeting practices into line with the realities of the 
financial environment in which we operate. Although the office of the dean will 
necessarily carry the major responsibility for the school's budget, I look forward to 
greater participation by faculty through the departments and other 
administrative units in both its shaping and implementation. The past has been 
marked by too much ad hoc expenditure decision making and loose control over the 
allocation of revenues. We need a system of financial management capable of 
responding to unexpected short-term changes in the flow of funds, if necessary, 
but which makes tracking income and outgo accurate and feasible.. 
All four of these goals are consistent with the objectives set forth in a draft 
strategic planning report advanced for Cornell University as a whole. If we can 
achieve these goals in the next decade or so, the ILR School will strengthen both 
itself and the university. While I have eschewed discussion of the implementation 
of these goals because that will involve a process of detailed planning and 
negotiation best left to the actors on the scene, I am confident that at the close of 
its next half-century the ILR School will still be a leader in understanding the world 
of work, regardless of the changes in its contours, and in preparing students and 
others to meet its challenges. 


The Future Lies Ahead (With Apology to Mort Sahl)

[Excerpt] The progress and development of the ILR School during the past 50 years, though sometimes uneven in both pace and direction, has largely met the promise and expectations embodied in the founding legislation. The fulfillment of the legislative purpose testifies to the contributions of those many individuals and institutions with whom we have interacted over this period of astonishing growth in size, complexity of structure and programs, and recognized stature at home and abroad in both the academic and practitioner worlds. Because the largest part of my professional life h a s been spent as a member of the ILR community—as undergraduate student in the school's early years, as faculty member, and now, until my pending retirement in that role, as dean, in this last chapter I want to offer some observations on the school's future that have been informed by this experience. Although these are personal views, I am confident that they are not unique but are shared widely among the school's constituencies of faculty, students, alumni, and the external publics we have served over the years. Although one hopes that the future of an institution such as the ILR School can be what we want it to be, it is important to recognize and acknowledge the limits of control. That is a lesson we have learned from coping with and adapting to a constantly changing environment in our 50-year history. I will not burden you with the details of that experience, but it is useful to contrast briefly the economic, social, and political environment of the school as a nascent institution in the late 1940s and 1950s and the comparable dimensions of its more recent past.Lipsky114_The_future_lies_ahread011.pdf: 56 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020

eCommons@Cornell

Cornell University ILR School 
DigitalCommons@ILR 
The ILR School at Fifty: Voices of the Faculty, 
Alumni and Friends Publications about the ILR School and Faculty 
January 1996 
12. The Future Lies Ahead (With Apology to Mort Sahl) 
David B. Lipsky 
Cornell University, dbl4@cornell.edu 
Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/ilratfifty 
Thank you for downloading an article from DigitalCommons@ILR. 
Support this valuable resource today! 
This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Publications about the ILR School and Faculty at 
DigitalCommons@ILR. It has been accepted for inclusion in The ILR School at Fifty: Voices of the Faculty, Alumni 
and Friends by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@ILR. For more information, please contact 
catherwood-dig@cornell.edu. 
If you have a disability and are having trouble accessing information on this website or need materials in an 
alternate format, contact web-accessibility@cornell.edu for assistance. 
12. The Future Lies Ahead (With Apology to Mort Sahl) 
Abstract 
The progress and development of the ILR School during the past 50 years, though sometimes uneven in 
both pace and direction, has largely met the promise and expectations embodied in the founding 
legislation. The fulfillment of the legislative purpose testifies to the contributions of those many 
individuals and institutions with whom we have interacted over this period of astonishing growth in size, 
complexity of structure and programs, and recognized stature at home and abroad in both the academic 
and practitioner worlds. 
Keywords 
School, labor, work, relation, industrial, faculty, ILR, program, graduate 
Comments 
Suggested Citation 
Lipsky, D. (1996). The Future Lies Ahead (With Apology to Mort Sahl). In Gruenfeld Goldberg, E. (Ed)., 
McKersie, R., Miller, J. Gormly, Aronson, R., & Julian, R. (Compilers). The ILR School at Fifty: Voices of the 
Faculty, Alumni & Friends (pp. 211-215). Ithaca, NY: Cornell University. 
http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/ilratfifty/13/ 
This article is available at DigitalCommons@ILR: https://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/ilratfifty/13 
12.
THE FUTURE LIES AHEAD (With
Apology to Mort Sahl)
by David B. Lipsky
't![:heprogress and development of the ILR School during the past 50 years,
though sometimes uneven in both pace and direction, has largely met the promise
and expectations embodied in the founding legislation. The fulfillment of the
legislative purpose testifies to the contributions of those many individuals and
institutions with whom we have interacted over this period of astonishing growth
in size, complexity of structure and programs, and recognized stature at home and
abroad in both the academic and practitioner worlds. Because the largest part of
my professional life has been spent as a member of the ILR community-as
undergraduate student in the school's early years, as faculty member, and now,
until my pending retirement in that role, as dean, in this last chapter I want to
offer some observations on the school's future that have been informed by this
experience. Although these are personal views, I am confident that they are not
unique but are shared widely among the school's constituencies of faculty,
students, alumni, and the external publics we have served over the years.
Although one hopes that the future of an institution such as the ILR School
can be what we want it to be, it is important to recognize and acknowledge the
limits of control. That is a lesson we have learned from coping with and adapting
to a constantly changing environment in our 50-year history. I will not burden you
with the details of that experience, but it is useful to contrast briefly the economic,
social, and political environment of the school as a nascent institution in the late
1940s and 1950s and the comparable dimensions of its more recent past.
Yesterday
Perhaps the major environmental fact of the early postwar years was the
economic and political prominence oflabor-management relations. The wartime
restraints imposed on a growing labor movemen~ver a third of private sector
employment was organized and merger of the AFL and the CIO was in the
wings-and on major industries determined to slow or thwart further union
advances were being removed at the time the school was founded. Apprehension
in the postwar period over a possible recurrence of a major economic recession, on
the one hand, and an equally intense concern over inflation, on the other, were
pervasive topics of discussion in the daily press as well as the scholarly journals.
Much of this discussion focused on the institution of collective bargaining.
211
212 The ILR School at Fifty
Expansion of the social "safety net" established in the New Deal period, including
eventually private as well as public programs dealing with occupational safety
and health, was pushing the boundaries of industrial and labor relations as a field
of study and practice well beyond their prewar range. .
The relevance of an institution such as the ILR School, accordingly, was
manifest. The need to understand the processes involved and to train industrial
relations practitioners, as the New York State legislature had anticipated, was
clear. There was little difficulty in our formative years in obtaining the resources
to develop programs both in Ithaca and in the extension centers elsewhere in the
state. Endorsements from the then politically more influential labor movement
and from management organizations familiar with our programs, as well as the
reputation of Cornell, generally favored our case in the annual budget negotiations.
Today
The environment in which the school functions today is quite different from
the early years. The labor movement in the United States has lost strength and
influence. Though signs of revival are emerging, a return to the level of influence it
enjoyed in the early years of the school remains problematic. A strong political
movement to weaken and even roll back the social advances of the earlier years
has achieved substantial voter approval. Public support for higher education
generally has weakened while institutions such as ours are expected to produce
more with relatively fewer resources. In recent years the school has suffered a
series of relatively large cuts in state funding, forcing layoffs and early retirements
of key support personnel.
At the micro level, where much of our research and teaching are focused,
there are significant developments that challenge us. Chief among them are the
changes in the nature and organization of work, propelled by technological
advances such as computerization at a pace even more rapid than the
automation movement of the 1960s and '70s; the increasing globalization of
production and employment, blurring the lines between foreign and domestic labor
markets; the rise of the human resource management function; and the much
discussed inequality in the distributions of income and employment opportunities.
In sum, labor-management relations may not be quite as close to center
stage as they were 50 years ago, but issues of the workplace and employment
relations are, if anything, more important than they were at the time of the
school's founding.
In the face of these developments, some other major academic institutions
have abandoned or downsized their industrial relations programs, or have folded
them into other programs. At the same time, graduate or professional industrial
relations and human resource degree programs have proliferated, usually in
smaller colleges and with limited faculty resources. Meanwhile the ILR School
continues to enjoy its strong reputation as the nation's leading institution for the
The Future Lies Ahead 213
preparation of individuals trained to make useful and important contributions to
both the practice and study of industrial relations and human resource
management. Applications for admission at both undergraduate and graduate
levels continue to be strong and on a rising curve of quality. We successfully met
out commitment to raise, as a part of Cornell's five-year capital campaign, $20.5
million, and I believe that by that magical year 2000, when all the donor pledges
made in the course of the campaign have been fulfilled, the school's endowment
will very likely reach $12 million, four times its size in 1990. And, of course, well
before that date our new building, equipped with state-of-the-art educational
technology appropriate to our mission, will have been completed and occupied.
Today's Challenges
Despite all of this apparent good news, I must express my concern about our
capacity to maintain the unique position we have attained in our field. I am
confident we can overcome or at least adapt without major retreat from our
original mission to the assaults on our budget and the emergence of competing
programs. That can only happen, however, if the ILR faculty continues the
practice of critical self-examination that has from the beginning been so essential
to our growth and survival in the face of constantly changing environments in
education and in our specialized field of study. The school has been able to meet
challenges in the past because of the faculty's collective willingness to diagnose
our problems objectively and debate proposed solutions vigorously but collegially.
I worry that this propensity has weakened in recent years, not because of
indifference or because of the growth (perhaps especially among younger faculty)
of a kind of professional narcissism. In my view, it is because of two impersonal
factors. One is the growth of specialization in the basic social science fields that
inhibits both our knowledge and our interest in the work of colleagues outside our
own discipline. Consequently, our ability to communicate across disciplinary lines,
even within the school, has been weakened. The second factor is that we have
recruited new faculty from first-rate graduate programs in basic social and
behavioral sciences, but in which industrial and labor relations per se is not the
core of the program. The orientation of these more recent faculty cohorts tends
toward the home discipline, to an external reference group rather than an internal
one. For an interdisciplinary program such as ours, the continuation of these
developments could threaten our future, especially if they become embedded in our
teaching and research and in our participation in public service. We could well
become second rate, or as I said to the faculty at its first meeting of the 1995-96
year, we could become the "last dinosaur alive."
So I believe it is imperative that we revive the spirit of collegiality and
commitment to the school's original and still-relevant mission through a
continuation and strengthening of our habits of self-diagnosis, self-criticism, and
self-healing. This may require some changes in organization, in the relationship
between faculty and administration, for example. Basically, however, it will
214 The ILR School at Fifty
require a common vision and commitment to strategic goals that will guide the
school's programs into the new century.
Goals I Propose
Here are four goals that I propose can provide the framework for our future
development.
First, the ~R School should continue its unique interdisciplinary approach to
the study of industrial and labor relations, but with an effort to improve the topical
balance of its programs between domestic and international issues. Since the late
1980s we have made excellent progress in studying and analyzing the industrial
relations systems of other countries. Our concerted effort to "internationalize,"
however, may have diverted our attention from a number of crucial domestic
issues. Admittedly, some of these domestic issues are related to the increased
globalization oflabor and product markets. The interplay of domestic and
international industrial relations developments needs to be explored intensely on
every level. I am confident that such exploration will, if pursued in an
interdisciplinary framework, strengthen our commitment to our original mission
while it enriches our teaching, research, and public service efforts. Our goal here
should be nothing less than leadership in this essential merger of the two spheres
of our subject matter.
Second, the ILR School should become a leader in providing up-to-date, high-
quality training and retraining for industrial and labor relations professionals. Our
responsibility to the field should not terminate with the graduation of well-
prepared students, as important as that is. In a world of extremely rapid
technological, industrial, and economic change affecting job content and
responsibility, it is no longer sufficient to entrust maintenance of professional
competence to informal in-service or on-the-job training. Professional workers, it
is now clear, are at least as much at risk of displacement as other workers. They
need well-organized, quality programs to upgrade and maintain their skills. We
have made some advance in this direction with our CAHRS and executive
education programs. We need to expand this approach, where appropriate, to
embrace other organizational and occupational publics that are currently
underserved in this regard.
Third, the school must exploit the opportunities presented by the emerging
technologies of instruction and research in order to remain relevant and to achieve
a world-class status in the field of industrial and labor relations. Our students and
other constituencies that we serve are becoming increasingly sophisticated in the
use of the computer. They are familiar with the potentialities of this tool and with
other developments for communication and learning. A growing number of
courses are incorporating the use of the Internet and the World Wide Web as
instructional tools, for example, and for several years we have been experimenting
with "distance learning." Our students and extension clients expect our programs
to utilize these new technologies to their fullest potential; but we have not kept up
The Future Lies Ahead 215
to the degree necessary. Our new Catherwood Library and the new classrooms
and laboratories will advance us toward this goal, but only if the ILR faculty itself
upgrades its competence in the use of the new technologies. The faculty and
administration should in the near future consider the installation of a continuing
program of in-service training to develop and maintain faculty competence in the
use and exploitation of new educational and communication technologies.
Finally, to achieve the foregoing objectives we need a major change in the
management of the school's financial resources. A series of significant cuts in
state support and a vastly increased dependence on private sources make it
imperative that we bring our budgeting practices into line with the realities of the
financial environment in which we operate. Although the office of the dean will
necessarily carry the major responsibility for the school's budget, I look forward to
greater participation by faculty through the departments and other
administrative units in both its shaping and implementation. The past has been
marked by too much ad hoc expenditure decision making and loose control over the
allocation of revenues. We need a system of financial management capable of
responding to unexpected short-term changes in the flow offunds, if necessary,
but which makes tracking income and outgo accurate and feasible.
-
All four of these goals are consistent with the objectives set forth in a draft
strategic planning report advanced for Cornell University as a whole. Ifwe can
achieve these goals in the next decade or so, the ILR School will strengthen both
itself and the university. While I have eschewed discussion of the implementation
of these goals because that will involve a process of detailed planning and
negotiation best left to the actors on the scene, I am confident that at the close of
its next half-century the ILR School will still be a leader in understanding the world
of work, regardless of the changes in its contours, and in preparing students and
others to meet its challenges.

