Is CIPS’ Latest Announcement Undermining its own Mission?

The latest announcement from CIPS regarding its governance appears to contradict the mission at the heart of the organisation.

Think of the most well-known professional bodies in the world and you will conjure a mental picture of a centrally run Institute, designed to manage and develop its profession, but ultimately with its members at its core. These members pay annual fees in order to attend events nationally and internationally, earn professional qualifications, maintain their Chartership, access materials and further development opportunities, all with the aim of building the reputation and membership of the profession.

These institutes have a Board or a management team who run the show day to day, but members are still given a voice when it comes to key issues and changes. Members will have voting rights, the ability to elect officials to represent them and their interests and ensure a system of checks and balances when it comes to the running of the Institute.

However, in a recent set of developments, it would seem that one of the key global bodies for procurement, CIPS, is set to take a different tack.

Congress, President and Voting Rights

Even as a member of CIPS, you would have been hard pressed to find information about the proposed changes. Poor communication with its members and next to nothing available publicly, the announcement had slipped past many people before being highlighted by senior voices in the profession.

It was only after this happened, and the subsequent questioning of CIPS as to the plans, that a follow up email was issued to members from CIPS Group CEO, Malcolm Harrison. To bring everyone up to speed, CIPS laid out plans to make several fundamental changes to how the Institute was run and how its members would be represented. These included:

• Disbanding the CIPS Congress as of the 31st of October – the Congress was a group set up to advise the CIPS Board, made up of member-elected representatives.
• Abolishing the role of CIPS President – this role was the global face of the Institute, attending events, both CIPS and non-CIPS, around the world and promoting the profession.
• Establishing a Membership Committee to replace the CIPS Congress – made up of appointed representatives, reporting to the Global Board of Trustees (GBT).

The key difference in the new set up is that representatives on the Membership Committee (MC) will be appointed by the Nominations Committee (NC). Members will no longer have voting rights over the officials and Committees who run CIPS. 

More concerningly, as Peter Smith points out, a ‘circularity’ is created in the appointment process, with the MC appointed by the Nominations Committee, who are in turn appointed by the GBT, who are in turn appointed by the NC, all without any member input.

What does this mean for members and CIPS?

Apart from the obvious removal of the voting rights over the Congress/Membership Committee, it’s unlikely that regular CIPS members will actually see much change. While the changes may seem extreme, the key issue in this instance has been the extremely poor communication from the Institute to its members on the changes. While stopping short of an apology, it’s something that Malcolm Harrison highlighted as an area for improvement in his subsequent email to the membership.

From CIPS’ point of view, the changes make sense for both the Institute and the profession. Replacing Congress with an appointed group in the Membership Committee should make it easier for members to raise issues and concerns to CIPS and have their voices heard. And while members may rail against losing their voting rights, historically, on average, fewer than 10% of members actually voted in Congress elections.

Going forward, CIPS have committed to improving the communication on these proposals and are bringing them to the 2022 AGM for member voting next summer. There is also further work being carried out on the ‘circularity’ issue that has been highlighted, with other ideas to be put forward to remove any governance concerns.

Modernisation and Development

There is no doubt that the proposed changes could have been handled much better by CIPS. With better communication, more context and better proposed solutions – for example, who represents CIPS globally now the role of President no longer exists – would have made the whole process less opaque and alleviated concerns the Institute was ignoring its members. 

As it stands, the changes that are proposed put in place a new governance structure that will help CIPS modernise and evolve, helping cement its status as a highly respected and influential professional body. This, in turn, will help procurement have a solid foundation to grow as a profession, moving towards a point where its Chartership is as recognised and valued as any other profession.

For the time being, however, CIPS needs to continue to listen to its members and find a way of re-engaging on a local and national level with those who feel ignored or disenfranchised, including those who have let their memberships lapse through a perceived lack of value or engagement. Communicating more openly and maintaining an over-arching management structure that actively benefits its members can only be a good first step.