Profit or Loss

The Institute of Radio Engineers (IRE) is a nonprofit organization. Yet, there is one profit motive that forms the very basis for the existence of The IRE and is the fundamental reason for its growth to about 80,000 members. This is the profit enjoyed by each member of the IRE in reading its publications and attending its meetings. The profit is two-fold, for the member enjoys enhanced prestige by association of his name with the IRE and he has the opportunity of increasing the depth of his technical knowledge. The last time this writer counted, there were almost 30 of these Professional Groups in The Institute. Laying aside for present purposes the question of whether there ought to be so many groups, we come to the problem of competition among the groups. Some have held that unlimited competition is a good thing because of its stimulating effect. This writer contends that this is not true in a membership organization like The Institute, which has as a primary function mutual education, not competition. Each Professional Group provides a forum through which engineers especially interested in one aspect of the broad scope of the IRE can be assured of being kept up to date in that field without delving through all the literature in the adjacent and distant fields. If the scopes of the groups are permitted to overlap greatly, the entire reason for the formation of separate groups is lost. In areas where groups overlap, assuming that there is no desire on the part of these groups to merge, it is suggested that cooperation by such means as joint symposia and publications, rather than competition, will yield the greater mutual profit.