National Goal Formation in a Time of Transition

Discontinuous change of institutions, values, concepts, etc. is the characteristic of the world today. In the face of this discontinuous change the methods of goal setting remain essentially unchanged in the traditional steady-state mold. In times of transition such as now we must be able to learn how to handle large quantities of unstructured and unfamiliar information, often qualitative in nature, which exceeds the capacity of the unaided human mind. The hallmark of our present society is the success of science and technology in meeting our dated social goal. This, in turn, has caused the absolute need for reexamination of the values and goals in relationship to science and technology. Yet, no new guide for this reexamination has yet been proposed. What we offer here is a viable alternative to steady-state resolutions-transition management. This approach to resolving the issues of value differences in times of discontinuous change is based on the premise that solutions to problems during transition can be attained effectively only if value differences are made explicit. The major elements in the management of discontinuous change require skills in supportive confrontation and conceptual mapping. These skills lead to making values explicit and then to the development of new insights and value relationships. This leads to the cognitive reformation of previously held value patterns and to emergent solutions to otherwise insoluble conflicts.