Creating social change

The present decade is as critical as it is unique. It is critical because of the extreme pervasiveness of the social change processes affecting the structure and functioning of our society. The course that these changes follow and the end results during the 1970s will mold the character of life in this country and abroad for decades to come. We are also living in a unique time period. At no other time in history have such important change processes been present together with a relatively sophisticated social technology. When we speak of social technology, we mean the capability of dealing with-of controlling or helping to guide-human behavior.

At any given time social technology consists of the accumulated inventory of behavioral knowledge giving us a better understanding of individual and social behavior. In many instances our understanding of behavioral phenomena enables us to intervene in individual and social life and to organize, plan, implement, and control behavioral processes to the betterment of society in general. Of course, our ability to influence behavior is far from total and perhaps fortunately so because not all change is necessarily good. Nevertheless, scattered throughout the behavioral sciences are many sound guidelines for managing social change. We feel that the current state of the art for organizing, planning, implementing, and controlling social change processes is at a sufficiently high level to warrant our bringing together the best of these guidelines and placing them in a single volume under the title, Creating Social Change.