We explain what an institution is and how they are classified according to the purposes they pursue. Also, which are the most important institutions.
What is Institution?
An institution is any type of organization human, which implies stable and structured relationships between persons, which are kept in the weather, in order to fulfill a series of objectives explicit or implicit.
An institution implies practices, habits Y traditions, which are regulated either by moral standards or by legal provisions. They can range from a few people to thousands of individuals, depending on your scope. It also usually has a culture common to all its members, who share certain ideas and values that motivate them to be part of it.
Institutions can be formal or informal, and can have a correspondence with one or more physical places where their characteristic activities take place. Depending on how formal you are, you can develop a autonomy cultural, which manifests itself in the creation of its own symbols, in the recording of its own institutional history and even in the formulation of a language own.
Every institution is made up of formal and informal rules at the same time. The formal rules are those that reach a legal character (it may be a law only valid within the institution) and that are usually written in some type of institutional code. Informal rules are moral habits and criteria that do not reach legal status or are written but are obeyed because there are forms of punishment for those who do not comply with them. Informal rules can often be transformed into formal rules or vice versa as the social conditions in which the institution exists change.
In addition, they usually imply a hierarchy, which distributes power asymmetrically among the members of the institution, although there are also a few cases of egalitarian institutions (these are made up of few individuals). This asymmetry implies that some members have more capacity than others to decide on the rules, or to appropriate or manage the resources that the organization possesses.
Institutions are not generally the result of planning, but arise over time in response to the needs of the community. population or as a result of the fight for the can between individuals or groups. However, once consolidated, institutions often modify elements of themselves to better adapt to changing circumstances, to expand their sphere of action, or to strengthen their authority over institutions. subjects. This is clearly seen in the laws enacted by the Condition to regulate its own action on the society.
According to the purposes they pursue, the institutions can be classified into:
- Political institutions (for example a political party)
- Economic institutions (for example a bank or a business commercial)
- Legal institutions (a court of Justice)
- Labor institutions (a labor union)
- Scientific institutions (a medical research laboratory)
- Educational institutions (a school or a university)
- Artistic institutions (a musical orchestra).
Most important institutions
The family is a clear example of the process of institutional change.
- The state. It is the most important of all modern institutions, not only because of its enormous scope and the large number of individuals it includes in its daily practice, but because through the law it can regulate the functioning of the other institutions. The State is an institution with a high proportion of formal rules, that is, the relationships between officials are clearly established in the codes and laws (what decision-making capacity does each individual have, who must obey whom, etc.)
- The family. On the other hand, it is an institution made up mostly of informal rules, which includes a much smaller number of members and which does not usually have an explicit or formal declaration of its objectives (mutual affection and raising children). The family is a clear example of the process of institutional change, by which as the dominant values in society were modified over time and, as the legal and economic conditions were changing, it was passed from the traditional monogamous family to different models of families (single parent, of people of the same sex) that coexist today.