Second, the new structural relationship must be able to unify and advance the field of optical science and engineering significantly better than the separate societies. And finally, the strengths, values, and governance mechanisms of OSA and SPIE should be preserved as long as the members of each of the respective societies wish. Federation versus Merger A federation works when its members have mostly different missions, interests, and objectives, but can agree to cooperate on a limited number of things to mutual advantage. In a federation, the central organization is inherently weak with limited decision making authority. Most of the business operations are conducted independently by the members, with little coordination or communication.
Members can elect to leave the federation at any time.
If the members of a federation are strong competitors, there is a natural opposition to anything that might weaken the competitive or financial position of one member relative to the others, or that would strengthen the federation relative to the competing members. Compromise and agreement are hard to achieve, and rarely happen on matters of substance because of the competition. In a merger, the unified organization is inherently strong because the component parts are coherently combined to achieve a true synergism that is much more than a simple sum of the parts, which creates new opportunities. Mechanisms exist to assure that decisions can be made in a timely manner, recognizing small group interests, but also assuring that the interests of a vocal minority do not prevent meeting the needs of the majority. As a result, the optics field is split as the two societies compete directly for the time, allegiance, and money of people in the same technical community .