The World Institution Building Programme (WIBP), an
International Charity observed its 46th Anniversary on the
occasion of the World Environment Day, 5th June 2020. The
Founder President of WIBP, Prof. Dr. P R Trivedi recalled
that the WIBP was established to complement and supplement
the efforts of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)
and accordingly the inauguration of the World Institution
Building Programme (WIBP) coincided with the first World
Environment Day on 5th June 1974.
During the past 46 years, WIBP has been researching on
different aspects of Institution Building : Why and How are
the Institutions established ? How and Why do they get
indisposed ? Why do Institutions get stagnated ? Why do
Institutions get murdered ? What are the prescriptions for
overcoming the stages of stagnation of Institutions ?
In this connection the Founder President of WIBP has brought
below the 450 principles and practices of Institution
Building based on his experience of more than 46 years of
dedicated service towards promoting Institutions all over
the world for tacking all the burning problems like global
warming, sea level rise, polar icecap melting, ozone
depletion, environmental disasters, unemployment among men
and women, insurgency, peacelessness, pollution and
population explosion.
INTRODUCTION
1. The purpose of institution building is to introduce,
foster, and guide more efficient social changes and new
patterns of individual and group relations in government
agencies philanthropic organisations, academic institutions
and in industry. Institution builders generally face two
tasks: to simultaneously build a viable organization and to
manage the linkages with other organizations on which the
institution must depend for resources and support.
2. The main goal in achieving developmental targets is the
accomplishment of institutionality, measured by steady
growth of organizational capability, penetration of the
relevant environment (producing and protecting desired
changes, philosophies, systems, and behaviour in
governmental and national organizations), by maintaining
their innovative thrust.
3. Institution builders are responsible for making things
happen and not merely for responding to pressures. To avoid
this tendency to respond to pressure, the institution
builders must choose deliberate strategies of action and
tactics and to implement them as they learn from experience.
But institution builders must be prepared to revise their
strategies and even their goals in order to cope with
unexpected problems or to take advantage of fresh
opportunities.
4. Institution building is the possible consequence or
effect of deliberate action.
5. The word institution is sometimes used as a synonym for
organization. This is acceptable, if we recognize that an
institution includes more than formal structure and process.
Institutions may be regarded as regulative principles which
organize most of the activities of individuals in a system
or society into some definite organizational patterns from
the point of view of some of the perennial, basic problems
of any society or ordered social life.
6. Before we discuss the art and science of Institution
Building, let us know and elaborate the following terms:
LEADERSHIP
# Leadership delivers resources.
# Leadership promotes the doctrine internally and
externally.
# Leadership keeps the internal structure functioning.
# Leadership mobilizes the organization to accomplish the
programme.
# Leadership establishes and cements linkages with external
groups.
# Leadership is alert to opportunities to incorporate new
groups for support, output, and acceptance
DOCTRINE
# Doctrine dramatizes the new idea as well as innovation and
change.
# Doctrine helps to sell a programme and organization with
it.
# Doctrine defines the goals.
# Doctrine can generate support.
# Doctrine helps define and limit internal and external
conflict.
# Doctrine absorbs ideas and needs and combines them with
new ones to make the organization acceptable in the society.
PROGRAMME
# Programme provides impact in the environment.
# Programme provides visibility.
# Programme provides vital contact with the environment.
# Programme is the ultimate testing ground for output.
# Programme promotes support by the environment of the
organization.
# Programme provides a specific focus for change-oriented
activities.
# Programme provides an identity for clientele and staff and
ultimately for the society.
RESOURCES
# Resource mobilization involves using old and new sources.
# Resource mobilization involves a wide variety of elements,
money, people, technology, etc.
# Resources hold the organization together until it can
become accepted.
# Resources provide internal strength and cohesion in the
organization.
# Resources contribute to autonomy
INTERNAL STRUCTURE
# Internal structure is a key to converting resources to
programme.
# Internal structure is a base for organization
mobilization.
# Internal structure is a device for demonstrating
innovative capacity.
# Internal structure is a means for reflecting goals and
doctrine.
# Internal structure provides a means for resolving internal
conflict.
ENABLING LINKAGES
# Enabling Linkages provide power to act.
# Enabling Linkages provide protection.
# Enabling Linkages provide initial resources.
# Enabling Linkages support a new public image.
NORMATIVE LINKAGES
# Normative Linkages show what values must be observed.
# Normative Linkages define relationships with other
organizations.
# Normative Linkages can help legitimized activities.
# Normative Linkages can provide support in making new ideas
fit present values.
# Normative Linkages provide the framework for defining
objectives in the national institutional structure
FUNCTIONAL LINKAGES
# Functional Linkages provide inputs the organization needs
to function.
# Functional Linkages promote the use of what the
organization does.
# Functional Linkages help define programme boundaries.
# Functional Linkages reinforce the effect on organizational
clientele.
# Functional Linkages provide opportunities for mutually
beneficial support in the environment.
DIFFUSE LINKAGES
# Diffuse Linkages broaden the base of support.
# Diffuse Linkages strengthen the public image of the
organization.
# Diffuse Linkages help reinforce acceptance by the society.
# Diffuse Linkages provide alliances with other
change-oriented groups.
# Diffuse Linkages promote an understanding in the society
of the goals of the organization.
7. We have to agree generally with the different dimensions
of the problem of institution-building: to build or change
an institution to establish a stable set of desired
behaviours in a particular place and time. To do this, it is
necessary to get people to accept certain norms or standards
and to pattern their behaviours to fit these norms which
must be grounded in some underlying regulative principles.
The hub of the task of building (or changing) institutions
is to establish a combination of behaviours norms regulative
principles which will serve developmental aims.
8. Institution-building is indirect because it involves
changing or creating values as well as behaviour. It may
involve undermining and replacing existing norms which may
have proved inimical, or a liability, to development and
societal wellbeing. If institution-building is not simple to
understand, it is often even harder to do.
9. An institution's activities are justified and ordered by
norms linked to basic principles of the social system. Norms
have two values:
# They guide behaviour which is useful in the system because
they are functional or practical.
# They are also proper; they are justified because they
reflect more basic values or principles.
10. The strength of norms stems from two sources, practical
workability and merit.
11. Leaders (who are change agents) in institution-building
begin by identifying the need for improved conditions in a
social system. They then try to find a way to meet this
need, by creating new conditions or outcomes in society,
through effective patterns of action. In such efforts two
related value problems are involved. One is to get the
values produced by the intervention accepted within the
system. The other is to design an intervention whose
internal norms are acceptable as well as effective.
12. Leaders often assume that :
# the aims and effects they propose are good and will be
valued within the social system; therefore
# the means they propose will likewise be valued as
instruments of a desirable end; and therefore
# the rules or norms included in the means will tend to be
accepted without serious resistance.
13. Hence the process of institutionalization is not a
simple, linear function. There are interruptions, retreats,
accommodations, regroupings, divisions, and emergence of
secondary goals, amended objectives and even altered
doctrines.
14. Be that as it may, an institution must embody changes in
values, functions, physical and/or social technology; it
should establish, foster and protect normative relationships
and action patterns and it should attain support and
complementarity in the environment. It should survive the
vicissitudes of time and emerge as a vibrant innovative
institution, capable of withstanding the stresses of
turbulent periods, and as an instrument for accelerated
development.
15. If institutional change is induced, the types of power
that may be brought to bear on an objective can range from
stark coercion to education that changes the awareness and
value orientations of its clients. Some instruments of power
include strong leadership, control of resources, positive
and negative sanctions, promotion of such latent regulative
principles as progress and prestige, and various incentives.
When the objective is to change the institutional patterns
of a target group, one important source of power is the
ability to reduce the risk associated with changes in
behaviour patterns.
16. Coercion can be used to eliminate an institutionalized
interest, but not as the primary mechanism for creating a
new one. Education may be used as an instrument of power,
not only to create technical efficacy but to change the
sense of identity and the value orientations of
participants. Trustworthy appeals to self-interest are
powerful ways to induce the acceptance of new norms.
17. When the scope of an action extends across the line
between a bureaucracy and its environment,
institutionalization can be quite difficult. For example, an
agricultural development programme may combine efforts from
a number of parts of the bureaucracy, in the ministries of
agriculture and finance and elsewhere, to provide
information, credit, and materials. This public sector
activity must be mated with the behaviours of farmers,
marketing organizations, and perhaps, local community
leaders.
18. The bureaucratic aspect of the programme may require,
along with careful planning, co-ordination and funds, some
important changes in values. Bureaucrats, who may be
accustomed to acting on the basis of authority and inclined
to be ignorant of the problems and realities of the
peasantry, will have to adopt new norms, a desire to
understand the farmers and a willingness to promote their
well-being. None of this will make much difference unless
the programme appeals to, perhaps even changes the norms and
behaviours of, the target population and other important
people such as farmers or merchants.
19. The family itself may be institutionalized around a
farming tradition. Certain work may be proper for the men or
for the women. The community structure may be arranged in
terms of traditional rights and obligations, and the
programme may threaten that tradition.
20. Public institutions can be differentiated into those
forming the public bureaucracy and those others functioning
under public sponsorship or support to achieve other
economic and social goals. The public bureaucracy is a
necessary institutional device required for progress and
survival. The institutional role of governments is
preponderant but not absolute. The bureaucratic institution
exists not on the sufferance of governments but in
partnership with governments. The situation varies, however,
from one country to another, and constitutes a national
specificity of institutional modes peculiar to each country.
21. Yet another dynamic aspect lies in the institutional
task system itself. For example, in the field of rural
development, at a particular stage of development,
production and productivity may acquire primacy over other
considerations. The institutions concerned can, in the
process, acquire growth values as their key impetus. At
another stage of development, distributive justice may come
to be of crucial relevance. However, it is often the
experience that the growth values do not transcend into
developmental values. There arises in this context a
dilemma: whether new institutions are to be created or
whether situational imperatives are to be brought to bear
upon older institutions to respond to the needs. It seems
that there are no either-or options.
22. A leader must possess certain qualities in order to
continually motivate an organization. It is continuity of
effective leadership that affects staff performance and
overall organizational effectiveness. It is the leader's
responsibility to develop incentives for the motivation of
staff personnel. The word incentive here refers to the full
set of factors that shape human behaviour within
organizations, including norms, standards, and motivational
and material rewards.
23. A major part of the problem of Institution Building is
that the internalization of new value systems and the
establishment of technological norms and standards of
performance take time. This length of time affects the
willingness of politicians to initiate or support a reform
scheme. Strong and persistent political support is necessary
if institutionalization is to be successful. Organizational
inertia is also an important incentive factor that relates
to time.
24. Any organization, once established, resists change. A
new institution requires time to become stable. Yet
administrative reforms institutions are expected to be both
change-inducing and viable. This often creates a conflict
and may preclude the prospect of long-standing developmental
institutions.
25. Support for an organization may be divided into two
categories, namely: the kind of support which essentially
accords recognition of an organization and acceptance of its
right to exist; and the kind which might be labelled
material and which consists of a flow of resources which the
organization uses to carry on its existence.
26. For purposes of institution-building, this distinction
between acceptance and material support is particularly
useful in thinking about the long-term existence and
effectiveness of an administrative reform agency or a public
administration institute. Legitimation as a basis for
securing support is essentially a rational-legal approach to
the issue, and may consist simply of the statutory enactment
by the legislative authority.
27. There is, simultaneously, an emotive aspect to the
support base. With special historical heritage, cultural
uniqueness, and other social ties and ramifications in the
developing countries, the support base for
institution-building will involve, equally forcefully, the
emotional components.
28. There are two problems with attempting to obtain initial
legitimation or foundational support. One problem is
determining how much to promise, i.e., how much to represent
in the way of the future results, in order to gain the
necessary initial support.
29. The other problem is the status and behaviour of a
leader seeking to establish or reform an existing
institution. This status and behaviour may differ strikingly
from later requirements for the sort of leadership that can
influence the flow of material support.
30. Management is a two-phased activity. One phase is
directed internally, to shape, guide, direct and assess the
inside workings of an organization. The other phase of
management is concerned with maximizing the relations
between the organization and its environment. This is
sometimes referred to as working at the institutional level
of the organization.
31. The essential task of institutional management is to
influence, as much as possible, the interaction of the
organization and its environment, to promote both the
survival and the effectiveness of that agency. This task
requires, first of all, the ability to perceive and
interpret the environment. The absence of this competence is
like flying blind, without map or instruments. In the real
world of action, however, knowledge alone does not suffice.
32. Institutional management includes the ability to act,
taking a pro-active stance with respect to environmental
elements. Or, it may be more a matter of making internal
adjustments to inexorable external realities.
33. Although a number of developing countries have made
substantial progress in increasing their supply of competent
managers by establishing a variety of management development
institutions, some of these institutions have failed to play
decisive roles in the over-all national development process.
In view of the importance of management in national
development, all institutions concerned with management
development should be made to play a strategic role in the
national development scene.
34. In particular, instead of isolating themselves from the
public systems that they seek to influence, they should
actively promote a view of public management to be shared
effectively by the political leadership, development
planners and public managers.
35. Management development comprises more than the mere
organization of training courses. It involves intensive and
extensive acculturization of managers so that they may
better serve the needs of the common man. There is need to
improve access to public services by all members of the
society, particularly the weak and the deprived.
36. The time has thus come for management development
institutions to reflect on their accomplishments and
environments, with a view to defining more realistic roles
and policies which will enhance their impact on strategic
problem areas of public management, and to influencing their
environment rather than being dominated by it.
37. In order to reduce intellectual dependence on exogenous
management theories and enhance their own credibility,
management development institutions must develop, through
meaningful research, a management philosophy, models and
approaches which reflect their cultural environments and
needs.
38. Correspondingly, national policies and objectives should
be defined by the national leadership in such a way as to
ensure that the management development institutions
contributions reflect the assessed realities and priorities.
39. Management development institutions should promote
collaboration and communication at the national, regional
and global levels. For this purpose, networks of
institutions should be established at those levels for
exchange of information and experiences. At the national
level, there should be greater debate and discussion of
major management trends and development involving the
participation of all sectors of the society.
40. Developing countries as well as the regional and
international organizations concerned with management
development should pay greater attention to the task of
institution-building and devote larger resources to
management development institutions, co-ordinate their
efforts and periodically evaluate the impacts of their
outputs.
41. It is the duty of the Institution Builders as well as
the regulatory, promotional, planning and other statutory
bodies to ensure an evaluation process on a continuing basis
for analysing the following :
# To identify the institutional performance variables.
# To chart the changes in the institutional performance over
a period of time.
# To identify various processes which influence
institutional performance.
# To discover whether the performance changes follow some
pattern which could be characterized as phases of
institutional development.
# To show how the processes are related to institutional
development.
42. Thus, the problem definition led to a sharper focus on
performance as a key to institutionalization and processor
as important influences on institutional performance. From
preliminary analysis, four categories of processes emerged
as important in the life of an institution.
These are:
# Birth processes
# Development processes
# Renewal processes
# Institutionalization processes.
43. The following are most important in the Indian context :
# Birth processes
# Idea origination and nurturance
# Choice of institutional form
# Location of the institution
# Choice of model
# Choice of early leadership
# Resource mobilization
# Support mobilization
# Development processes
# Initial recruitment
# Enculturation
# Decision making
# Structure
# Leadership style
# Boundary management
# Renewal processes
# Change in leadership
# Regeneration
# Exit
# Voice
# Redefinition of mission
# Integration
# Institutionalization processes
# Research
# Dialogue
# Dissemination
# Transfer
44. Analysis of these elements has led to postulate five
concepts to develop a general processual model of
institution building. These concepts are
# context
# capability development
# innovative thrust
# penetration, and
# process mechanisms.
45. We, then, have a revised model which has rectified the
confusion between inputs and outputs. Thus, the context
influences capability development mediated by process
mechanisms of first set of; capability development, in turn,
influences innovative thrust of the institution through a
second set of process mechanisms; and innovative thrust, in
turn, influences penetration through a third set of process
mechanisms.
46. It should be noted here that the capability development
process mechanisms are primarily externally or contextually
oriented; the innovative thrust process mechanisms are
basically internally oriented; and the penetration
mechanisms are externally oriented. Thus, we have contextual
process mechanisms, internally oriented process mechanisms,
and externally oriented process mechanisms. By isolating and
identifying process mechanisms in the three sets and also
postulating directions of influence the revised model has
made possible the development of the institution building
model into a more practical model.
47. The revised model can answer questions about what the
institution builder can do in order to develop the
institution. The revised model provides both a diagnostic
frame and an action frame. Institutional leaders need to
know the current state of institutional development and
probable future states to result from actions that they
initiate.
48. They also need guidance as to what action options are
available to them. The revised model is a step in this
direction and in this sense is neither complete nor
comprehensive. Using the revised model, the institution
builder can generate valid data from context, level of
capability development in the institution, level of
innovative thrust, and extent of penetration. He will also
be able to compare these levels with similar institutions
operating in the same context. Moreover, he will be able to
generate valid data on the relative strengths of various
process mechanisms which mediate capability development,
innovative thrust, and penetration.
49. Thus, knowing the state of the system and knowing the
action options available to him with respect to
strengthening, neutralizing, or reducing the weakness of
appropriate process mechanisms, an institution builder is
placed in a better position to act. This is not to imply
that an institution builder can consciously engineer all the
outcomes. Quite the contrary. The model points out that
institutional leadership is precarious and uncertain.
50. The contextual process mechanisms highlight the
dependence of the institutional leadership on factors
outside conscious control. The model only serves to sharply
focus the attention of institution builders on identifiable
sources of problems. Further, the internally oriented
process mechanisms and the externally oriented process
mechanisms which mediate institutionalization sequentially
underscore the difficulties of conscious manipulation. It is
no wonder that the easiest course of action for
institutional leadership is to let the institution drift.
Worse still, given the uncertainties of performance on
innovative thrust and more so on penetration, the
institutional leadership may focus wrongly on capability
development.
51. Capability development is important, but represents
basically performance on input development. Innovative
thrust and penetration concern themselves with input
utilization and conversion. Institutionalization, in the
final analysis, can take place and social change can occur
only if penetration takes place. Given a context where the
clientele are not demanding, it is easier to stop at
capability development and innovative thrust.
52. This is also evident from the relatively low attention
paid to institutionalization mechanisms in the six
institutions. This has resulted in a situation of
penetration by default rather than by design. The impression
one is left with is that management education institutions
cannot be considered to be change agents in the sense of
bringing about radically different values on their own. They
react more than initiate.
53. Let us discuss the major features of both the
"evolutionary" and the "engineering" models. We will examine
an engineering model of institution building its
assumptions, scope, and limitations. This will lead us to a
consideration of four major perspectives of institution
building which are important to its elaboration and
refinement.
54. These perspectives are:
# the leadership / elite / entrepreneurial perspective;
# the interorganization perspective;
# the organizational design perspective; and
# the diffusion of innovation perspective.
# Finally, an attempt at synthesis will be made through a
general processual model of institution building based on
empirical guidelines.
55. The "engineering model" differs from "evolutionary
model" in a fundamental way.
56. It is the rejection of the "natural selection" process
and the acceptance of an "elitist" engineered adaptation or
innovation that differentiates the "engineering" model of
institution building from the "evolutionary" model.
57. Explicit attention will have to be given to alternative
designs as well as to an examination of the conditions under
which various designs would bring about the desired results.
That there are serious limitations to planned change should
not deter development along this dimension. Such
developments should also examine the three possibilities
available to an institution builder and the consequence of
adoption of one strategy in preference to another. These
possible design options are:
# alteration of an existing institution,
# creation of a new institution with a specialized function
hitherto not carried out in the society, and
# creation of new institutions to integrate existing
specialized and fragmented institutions or functions.
58. Unless the Institution Building model develops along
this line it will not be in a position to provide guidance
to the institution builder in the choice of an appropriate
design not only initially but also continuously over time as
the institution develops.
59. What must be remembered is that in institution building
the concern is with the spread of values and norms and their
acceptance by the society. Further, the innovation in the
institution building model is the institution itself and the
concern is with the adoption of the institution by the
society.
60. Imminent change which occurs when people internal to the
society primarily on their own create and develop the
innovation.
61. Induced imminent change in that the innovation could be
catalysed by someone who is a temporary member of the
society, though the primary burden of the creation rests
with the members of the society.
62. Selective contact change when members of one system
adopt an innovation primarily as a result of their exposure
to the innovation outside their own system or society.
63. Directed contact change caused by actors external to the
system who seek to induce change for achievement of goals
defined by them.
64. The Institution Building model, as is apparent, is
concerned only with directed contact change. Viewed from an
innovation perspective, the model has to develop
capabilities of handling the other three types of changes
and, therefore, for choosing appropriate models of
diffusion.
65. In the institutional context the collectivities would
serve three ends, namely:
# to promote areas of common interest;
# to jointly obtain and allocate a greater amount of
resources than would be possible when each institution acts
independently; and
# to protect areas of common interest. In the context of the
collectivity one can examine the linkage relationship
between organizations. In fact, out of the four linkages in
the institution building model, this would mean a detailed
examination of one poorly understood linkage the normative
linkage.
66. Successful institutionalization of new or replacement
social patterns requires coordinated and complementary
efforts to build support for the new action pattern in four
aspects of social systems:
# universalistic-formal,
# universalistic-informal,
# particularistic-formal, and
# particularistic-informal
67. In implementing programmes of institution building the
serial order of developmental tasks proceeds from
# the establishment of minimum levels of legitimacy, to
# the achievement of operational competence to produce
expected benefits, to
# the cultivation of active and continuous exchanges with
the environment, to
# the development of adaptive capacity.
68. Successful Institution Building projects require a
variety of staff resources including specialists of at least
the following three kinds:
# those with skills in political liaison and in achieving
normative representation
# those with technical-analytic expertise on the content of
the institutional change sought, on the Institution Building
process, and on other relevant knowledge areas and analytic
methods, and
# administrative and programme operations personnel who are
competent in the application of the technologies selected,
in project management, and in eliciting cooperation from
those they encounter in operational situations. When any of
these resource groups are not adequately represented or
differentiated by unique competence and task orientations,
the probability of the success of an institution building
project will be significantly reduced
69. Success in Institution Building requires that the
innovation-carrying organization differentiates for itself a
position in the organizational network which facilitates
active exchange by defining its unique and limited functions
and identifying the net gains to the system which accrue
from its activities and from its interactions with other
actors.
70. Action orientations which comprehend both
# the development and promulgation of explicit substantive
positions, (relating to the content of change), and
# the creation of new sociopolitical processes to broaden
involvement or to enhance the quality or acceptability of
decisions are more likely to lead to successful
institutionalization of proposed innovations than approaches
which emphasize either content or process without
significant attention to the other.
71. Successful Institution Building projects will provide
for complementary adjustments at each level of Federalistic
hierarchies related to the area of activity in which the
changed action patterns are designed to occur.
72. Organizational learning requires the same capabilities
as good planning, the capacity of a corporate group to act
intelligently vis-a-vis group goals and activities. We can
identify the properties that make learning possible by
identifying what an individual needs in order to respond to
changing circumstances:
# a grasp of objectives
# control over the resources being planned for
# reliable models of external reality
# information about past experience
# sufficient interest to get the necessary planning done
# familiarity with methods for making projections
# open communication with all the parties involved
# ability to get the principal doer committed to the plan
# enough stability in the situation so that past experience
is relevant
73. In response to the need to develop some measure of
institutionalization, the author has developed seven general
requirements for an adequate measuring tool:
# Institutions need to be studied as societal organisms,
with life spans covering stages in some ways analogous to
the human life span, and with longer cycles analogous to the
generational cycle. This means that a temporal dimension
lacking in the early institution building model had to be
incorporated into the conceptual scheme.
# Valuedness as a core variable needs to be measured both
internally and externally by means of inferential,
observable indicators rather than by attempts at opinion
sampling.
# Autonomy, as the single most important indicator of
institutionalization, must be measured as a function of the
organization's legal or legitimacy status, its programme
activities, and its resource use rather than attempting to
evaluate it as a separable quality.
# Leadership should be dealt with as more than management or
administration� of the organization under study.
# The instrument should yield a cumulative index level of
institutionalization such that, over time, when applied to
the same organization, it shows a higher number when it has
become more successfully institutionalized, and a lower
number if there have been setbacks. It can thus serve as a
kind of institutionalizing thermometer for managers and/or
consultants.
# It should be easy to use, not requiring sophisticated
statistics nor expensive and laborious research techniques.
It should codify some readily observable factors associated
with institutionalization, weighting them realistically for
incorporation in the index formula so that the
interrelationship among factors bears some real-world
relation to their importance as institutional indicators.
# The overall quotient should give a generally useful number
as to relative level of institutionalization, and also, the
different categorical factors should provide useful analytic
insights, case by case, for remedying weaknesses or counter
balancing sectorial emphases. In short, it should be useful
as both a research and a diagnostic tool for managers,
consultants, and planners.
74. The organization occupies some "space" in its
environment and is defined more by the dynamic
interrelationship between its members and its societal
context than by its internal assets.
75. Thus, the defining properties of an organization are
characterized in terms of their internal asset value and
their external asset value. The way in which an organization
is perceived by its clients, sponsors, competitors, etc.,
and the place it occupies in their value systems, is perhaps
the most important asset of an organization.
76. Identifying the fundamental characteristics of an
organization the properties of organizationness as
contrasted to the conditions necessary to achieve viability
in a way that directly addresses the fact that these are
mutual properties of the organization and its environment;
77. Defining viability as a homeostatic relationship between
an organization and its environment so that these essential
properties of the organization are replenished.
78. Clearly, institutions do not exist in a vacuum. Much of
the above literature views the environment within which a
given institution operates from the vantage point of the
institution itself. However, the macro-oriented literature
summarized in the remainder of this chapter considers the
broader perspective. That is, the vantage points are
reversed so that, for example, the institutional
infrastructure of a society can be viewed by those for which
it is designed to serve. More important, with regard to why
development occurs in the direction that it does, the forces
that shape and redirect institutions are of interest to
development scholars and practitioners alike. Both will find
the following summaries worthy of their time and attention.
79. The Institution Building Universe and the Institution
Linkages include :
# Institution variables
# Leadership
# Enabling linkages
# Doctrine
# Transactions
# Functional linkages
# Programme
# Normative linkages
# Resources
# Diffused linkages
# Internal structure
80. Leadership applies not only to people formally charged
with the direction of an institution, but also to all others
who participate in the planning, structuring, and the
guidance of it. Within leadership, viewed as a unit,
important factors include political viability, professional
status, technical competence, organizational competence,
role distribution, and continuity.
81. Doctrine, as the stable reference point of an
institution to which all other variables relate, contains
such characteristics as specificity, meaning the extent to
which elements of doctrine supply the necessary foundation
for action in a given situation; the extent to which the
institutional doctrine conforms to the expected and
sanctioned behaviour of the society; and the degree to which
the institution's doctrine conforms to the preferences,
priorities, intermediate goals, and targets of the society.
82. Those actions related to the performance of functions
and services constituting the output of the institution
represent its programme. Hence, important aspects of the
programme variable include its consistency with the
institution's doctrine, stability of output, feasibility
regarding resources, as well as complementary production of
other organizations in the absorptive capacity of the
society, and the contribution of the institution toward
satisfying the specified needs of the society.
83. The inputs of an institution, here defined as resources,
are important not only in quantitative terms, but also
because of their sources. These sources and the ability to
obtain resources through them affect decisions with regard
to programme, doctrine, and leadership. Hence, the two
categories within this variable are availability and
sources.
84. As both structure and process, the category of internal
structure includes such things as the distribution of
functions and authority, the processes of communication and
decision making, and other relationship-action patterns.
Consequently, it determines the efficiency and effectiveness
of programme performance. Components of this category
include identification of participants within the
institution, consistency of the structure with the
institution's doctrine and programme, and the structure's
adaptability to shifts in programme emphasis and other
changes.
85. Every institution is dependent upon other organizations
for its authority and resources; hence, its linkages with
other entities are vitally important. These linkages also
include an institution's dependency on complementary
production of other institutions and on the ability of the
environment to use its resources. Finally, linkages are also
concerned with and subject to the norms of the society.
Through these linkages the institution maintains exchange
relationships with its environment, an interdependent
complex of functionally related organizations. The four
subcategories of linkages are discussed briefly below.
# In the initial stages of an institution's life, its prime
target is developing its relationship with other entities
that control the allocation of authority and resources it
needs; this category is called enabling linkages. Developing
relationships with such entities is important not only for
obtaining authority and resources, but also because these
are the same entities through which the institution's
opposition seeks to withhold needed inputs from it.
# Functional linkages relate the institution to (1)
organizations which are complementary in a productive sense
that is, which supply inputs and use the outputs of the
institution; and (2) those organizations which constitute
real or potential competition. Through functional linkages
an institution attempts to spread its innovations as it
embodies and promotes new patterns and technologies.
# Both sociocultural norms and operating rules and
regulations have important implications for institutions via
normative linkages, through which the society places certain
constraints on and establishes guidelines for institutions.
The norms, rules, and regulations can either act as
obstacles to or facilitate the process of institution
building.
# While these three categories of linkages refer to
relationships of an institution with other specific
institutions and organizations, diffused linkages refer to
the relationship between the institution and public opinion
and with the public in general. Thus, this category includes
relationships established through news media and other
channels for the crystallization and expression of
individual and small-group opinion.
# Through these four linkages, then, an institution carries
on transactions with other segments of the society. These
transactions involve not only physical inputs and outputs
but also such social interactions as communication, support
acquisition, and the transfer of norms and values. More
specifically, the purposes of transactions have been
identified as:
# gaining support and overcoming resistance,
# exchanging resources,
# structuring the environment, and
# transferring norms and values.
86. Institution Building is a time-consuming process. During
its initial phase certain values or goals are conceived by
the change agents, and a strategy is determined for their
attainment. Also during this period, support is sought for
achieving goals and values, an effort is made to overcome
resistances, and an attempt is made to acquire the necessary
authority and resources for the establishment of the
institution. Subsequently in the life cycle of the
institution, different strategies and actions are required
for executing the programme, maintaining the institution,
and facilitating the transfer of norms and values to other
elements of the society.
87. In reflecting on different case studies, it has been
attempted to :
# analyze and compare some of the most salient findings,
# suggest implications for the programme's general approach
to the institution building process and to the basic
concepts which were their common point of departure, and
# indicate the future development of theory, methodology,
and practical application toward which these studies point.
88. Assuming that an institution is falling short of its
objectives, the purpose of analyzing it would be to identify
the sources of discrepancy between intended and actual
system outputs. Subsequently, the analysis should be
designed to provide alternatives in the institution or in
its relations with other elements of the system that would
enhance the probability of its success in accomplishing its
objectives. Finally, the institution should be monitored to
determine whether the alterations did in fact improve its
effectiveness.
89. Effective institution development analysis requires
careful rationalization of the entire process of institution
building, identifying significant institutional
characteristics and putting these into an analytical
framework that can be understood and operationally applied.
The institution building matrix is the end product of this
process.
90. The matrix proved to be a very useful analytical as well
as programming tool and contributed significantly both to
the technicians and host government institutional leaders
understanding of the institution building process. It also
confirmed my belief that an analytical and evaluative
process could be developed upon which realistic
institutional goals and strategies could be determined and
initiated.
91. An analytical and an evaluative process compose this
matrix. The former requires analysis of the most significant
environmental factors of an institution, which are
identified in checklist fashion. One of these is the donor
of aid, which should be analyzed in terms of will, means,
state of technology, constraints, project inputs,
institution progress reporting, and influence. Environmental
factors should also be analyzed for the host institution and
its capacity for change should be evaluated.
92. The core of the matrix is the institution building
profile, which consists of observations on :
# institutional leadership properties,
# establishment of institutional doctrine,
# capacity for programme analysis,
# institutional structures,
# institutional linkages, and
# capacity for institutional change.
93. Combined administrative-managerial profiles are
constructed. The former include such major staff services as
planning, finance, budgeting, personnel, and procurement.
Subdivisions of the management component include :
# management by objectives,
# national capacity for attainment of objectives,
# measurement and control of objectives,
# political analysis for project implementation, and
# project information dissemination.
94. The objective of the entire analytical-evaluative
process is to provide a rational framework upon which an
institutional development strategy can be designed. The
analytical-evaluative technique is intended to clearly
identify major institutional strengths and weaknesses and
permit improvement strategies and courses of action to be
devised which will be instrumental in moving weak
institutional factors from right to left on the profiles.
95. The process gives the institutional leader good insight
into the nature of his institution, permits the presentation
of more critical and precise institutional goals or
objectives, enables the institution to divert manpower and
resources to more clearly defined objectives and problem
areas, and charts a more orderly, well-balanced course for
institutional improvement and viability.
96. The institution building matrix, although still in the
developmental-experimental stage, has been used for five
institutions. Experience has demonstrated that leadership
properties are the most sensitive category to evaluate.
Establishing institutional doctrine has proven to be the
most difficult factor to understand. In addition, the
capacity for institutional change is proving troublesome to
comprehend.
97. The Institution Building Studies and Research Programme
(IBSRP) must include the following :
# an analysis of the interdependence of values, norms,
structure, process, and technology in a social action
situation;
# an examination of the role of institutional organizations
in social action and their relevance to the introduction of
change;
# the identification of the major elements affecting the
establishment of new or reconstituted organizations which
(a) introduce changes in values, functions, or technologies;
(b) develop an internally consistent set of action elements;
(c) attain support and bring about complementarity in the
environment; and (d) foster, protect, and spread normative
relationship and action patterns.
98. The following aspects should be analysed for
strengthening the cause of Institution Building while
dealing with educational institutions :
# Teacher's attitude toward his major function
# Teacher's relationships with students
# Teacher's execution of function
# Teaching methods employed to achieve objectives
# Relationship of subject matter content to country needs
# Volume and productivity of research
# Proportion of projects directed to high priority problems
# Capability of staff for documenting the relevance to
country needs
# Definition of Extension Function
# Identification of Priority Activities with country needs
# Coordination with other agencies
# Improvement of System (Organizational Self-Improvement
Activities)
# Use of such principles and processes as: Group Dynamics,
Local Leadership, and Community Organizations
# Focus on Best Technology
# Stimulation of professional improvement
# Recognition and reward for excellence
# Delegation of authority
# Sharing in making professional decisions
# Effective use of controls
# Development of public support
99. Before establishing the Institutions, the following
should be kept in mind with a view to building a strong and
purposeful institution :
# identifying and evaluating need;
# forecasting the institution's capacity to fulfil the need;
# determining the institution's mission;
# determining the time dimensions of the development plan;
# selecting the top leadership;
# determining leadership style;
# designing the internal organization;
# determining the institution's doctrine, especially
selecting a model;
# planning enabling linkages;
# planning functional linkages;
# planning relations with similar institutions;
# planning for coping with environmental constraints.
100. The analysis of costs and benefits of management
education is divided into two parts. Initially, a conceptual
framework is developed for the measurement and analysis of
the private and social costs and benefits of management
education in the Indian context.
101. Both generic factors, inherent in probably all
institution building efforts requiring foreign
collaboration, and specific project factors had an effect on
the struggle for influence. Generic factors include :
# deficiencies in organizational planning,
# complications attributable to the participation of
foreigners,
# an inevitable disagreement over institutional doctrine and
purpose, and
# the exacerbating effects of newness on the one hand and
rapid growth on the other. Specific project factors include
:
# special cultural conditions of India
# heterogeneity of the faculty and administration
# the high involvement of the faculty, especially the
behavioural scientists, in an introspective analysis of the
institute's organizational structures, and
# the particular leadership styles of the directors and
their use of seconds-in-command.
102. Strategic planning in institution building, however
comprehensive, should not be regarded as a one-time activity
and should provide for periodic reviews and planned
critiques. Our Institute's clearly articulated doctrine gave
it a strong sense of direction and provided a solid base for
faculty collaboration. Although only a part of strategic
planning and subsequent evaluation, the cost-benefit
analysis methodology developed can help to ensure that
decisions are not unduly influenced by the enthusiasm and
articulateness of well-meaning proponents or by the special
interest of minorities with access to seats of power.
Likewise, when used in auditing the consequences of
decisions to initiate institution building projects,
cost-benefit analysis can help to prevent the expansion or
replication of activities that are attractive but not
demonstrably cost-effective.
103. Institutions have been found with the following
benefits as well as deficiencies :
# Those training experiences which provided a sense of
accomplishment through acquisition of new knowledge
especially, of knowledge applicable to familiar problems of
immediate concern to the trainee were the ones most highly
valued.
# The effect of management training on management practice
is contingent on the receptivity of the user organizations
to new ideas.
# The training efforts of the subject institutions may be
too highly spread over too many organizations to have as
much effect as if they were focused on a specific set of
organizations rather than individuals.
# Use of institutionality, technical capacity, normative
commitment, innovative thrust, environmental image, and
spread effect.
104. In some countries, the economic growth is stopped by
internal quarrels and mistrust? Why, in others, do
competitors not only control their conflicts but use them to
promote growth? In addressing this question, the present
volume develops a broad-based theory of institutions. Growth
depends, among other things, on a national capacity to build
institutions to manage conflicts. This capacity,
furthermore, requires national consensus on an economic and
a political ideology. These ideologies are defined as the
ways in which individuals envisage the economic and
political systems how they operate, and how just they are.
Ideological consensus in turn is fostered by a popular
nationalism, which therefore plays a positive role in growth
rather than the negative one usually attributed to it by
economists.
105. The effectiveness of institutions in managing conflict
to :
# capital and
# entrepreneurial capacity as potential facilitators of
economic growth.
# The appropriate kind of institution is a location-specific
phenomenon; an ideal institution for all circumstances does
not exist. In part, the effectiveness of institutions
depends upon the particular ideology on which consensus is
formed. Such consensus must ultimately emerge or growth will
falter.
106. A potential for conflict occurs whenever two
individuals interact and each seeks to satisfy his own
needs. The individuals often perceive this conflict even
before they sense their mutual goals, especially in the
encounters that are part of economic development. Once two
or more persons perceive that they have a mutual goal or
that separate goals can be achieved only if they work
jointly, a formal organization or a normal pattern of
behaviour emerges.
107. Such institutions are crucial in conflict resolution
because the potential for conflict exists whenever a
decision must be reached. Every decision is a conflict
resolved . The value or effectiveness of institutions, then,
can be measured in terms of their conflict-resolving
capacity. This capacity is of utmost importance because
conflicts, properly contained and managed, actually propel
growth, e.g., labour seeks higher wages which management can
pay only if productivity goes up.
108. Defined as any set of relationships between individuals
that is designed to resolve their conflicts, institutions
reveal each individual to the other as a reasoning person
capable of compromise to achieve mutual goals and with
predictable responses. As institutions facilitate conflict
resolution, confidence is placed in them, and, subsequently,
in the individual parties to the conflict. Given this mutual
confidence, the original institution which facilitated its
formation may be changed if a more efficient one emerges in
the growth process.
109. Growth requires a division of labour and specialization
which, in turn, require different institutions to facilitate
exchange. The particular type of institution selected will
be determined by benefits and costs of alternative
institutions as subjectively judged by members of the power
groups capable of forming it. If these groups are
growth-sensitive, many of the benefits will be judged by the
institution's capacity to achieve growth; its costs will be
measured in terms of the pain felt by the power group
forming it that is, in terms of sacrifices of resources,
prestige, values, the effort required to overcome resistance
of others, or even life itself in the case of a revolution.
110. In selecting among alternative institutions, the
following dimensions are relevant:
# centralized versus decentralized,
# authoritarian versus nonauthoritarian
# formal versus informal,
# employees incentives versus employees penalties, and
# neutral versus biased toward specific solutions.
# the set of dimensional points occupied by any institution
depends upon :
# the functions of the institution.
# the institutional ideology accepted in the country.
111. Institutional ideology is one of several values that
institutions must reflect. In fact, these values change as
the society moves from the pre-take-off, through the
take-off, and into the post-take-off stages. In the process,
the transitional nature of the values creates strains for
the institutions based upon them. The first institutions of
take-off must conform to existing values or they will not be
formed at all. For these institutions to be most effective
in light of the existing framework of values, they must
embody costly measures to protect contestants against other
contestants who are not trusted at the time of takeoff. This
means that the institutions are bound to strain values in
order to encompass the conflicts which are new at this
stage. The amount of strain a society can accept is limited,
of course. But after these institutions have existed for
some time and have been accepted in the society, values will
have changed and new institutions similar to them can be
created.
112. Subsequently, the new institutions can strain values
further, to the point where even the pace of the strain may
be accelerated. When the society accepts the strain even at
the point where the society itself becomes change oriented,
the strain involved in change may itself become a value.
This evolution of values suggests the profound effect that
institutions established early in takeoff have for
successive ones: Values and institutions interact: an
institution changes values, then a new institution is formed
dependent on the changed values; it changes them further,
and so on.
113. Perhaps more important, however, is the need for
ideological consensus within the society as it passes
through stages. Optimal consensus probably involves some
internal dissension, however, because it serves as a source
for institutional vigour and flexibility. Nevertheless, a
degree of consensus is a prerequisite for the evolution of
any institution. Hence, growth-sensitive power groups seek
consensus on ideology. Consensus can be gained directly
through numerous media or indirectly by first creating the
type of institution desired and then using it as a model for
fashioning other institutions. After a society has passed
through the takeoff period, all values essential to growth
are likely to be called into question. The cultural
structure erected to sustain growth is likely to be
questioned long before production reaches its physical
limits, because once the limitation of supply on growth
becomes foreseeable and the pollution predictable, a change
in values is likely to occur. Those for whom economic growth
is no longer a dominant goal will become desensitized to
growth.
114. Takeoff is the period in which growth-sensitive groups
form and move into positions of power. Landing is the period
in which power is sought by groups becoming desensitized to
growth. The two periods are symmetrical. In each there is
great confusion, as institutions of the previous period are
unable to cope with new conflicts arising out of growth (in
takeoff) or out of un-growth (in landing). Like takeoff
countries, landing countries will find themselves in a
severe ideological split. Institutions will weaken through
lack of consensus on goals, and effective institutions will
not be formed until a new consensus on ideology and goals
emerges.
115. Nationalism, defined as the acceptance of the State as
the impersonal and ultimate arbiter of human affairs, not
only is used as an ideology but also has operational
connotations. The combination of ideology and nationalism is
used by revolutionary elites to justify any action as
legitimate. In spite of its limitations, ideology may help a
society overcome some of its most difficult crises in the
early period. In the long run, ideologies which maintain
close contact with evolving aspirations may be more
effective than ideology issued as unmitigated dogma.
116. In countries where nationalist ideology has been
substituted for social cohesion, a power struggle frequently
results between the revolutionary elites and the successor
subelites. In these cases, the revolutionary elite may be
inclined toward a nationalistic ideology in which unanimity
and retention of control take priority over developmental
goals. Frequently the elites in power convert the technology
for development into technology for control. Regimentation
and discipline become prime organizational techniques as
demands for stability and national order replace those for
rapid social change. Economic leaders are often replaced by
military ones.
117. An attitude as a predisposition to experience a class
of objects in certain ways, with characteristic affect; to
be modified by this class of objects in characteristic ways;
and to act with respect to these objects in a characteristic
fashion. Hence, attitudes have been used by psychologists in
explaining characteristics in perception, motivation, and
social behaviour. Two major views concerning attitudinal
change have been identified. One is the dissonance or
disequilibrium theory of attitudinal change and the other is
an organizational or functionalist theory of the origin of
attitudes. The functionalist theory, which focuses on the
role of attitudes and values in reconciling the individual
to his environment, is used because the nature of
attitudinal change in developing countries is perhaps more
appropriately viewed in this way.
118. The very societies that are in need of massive
institutional change are those that lack an effective
complement of mechanisms for carrying out such change in an
orderly, systematic manner. While they have the advantage of
being able to imitate the mechanisms found in modern
societies, the process of imitation is far from simple.
Wherever one looks there are difficulties.
119. Potential problems are so numerous their very
multiplicity inhibits their recognition. Legislation for
reform is so cumbersome that it precludes the possibility of
change. Agencies responsible for dealing with the problems
of change are starved for power, resources, and freedom to
maneuver. In short, the institutional framework, and
particularly the power structure, seriously inhibit problem
solving activities in pre-modern societies.
120. The kinds of qualitative changes that must be made in
basic institutions are reflected in two value judgments and
empirical understanding of the workings of social systems.
According to the first value judgment, indigenous ability to
maintain a continually rising income in per capita terms is
both good and a defining characteristic of economic
development. The second value judgment states that
increasing equality of wealth and income must occur over
time. These judgments suggest the fundamental change of an
increase in equality of opportunity and an implied degree of
individual and group mobility. Freedom to organize and
expand is essential for both entrepreneurs and the other
dynamic roles needed in modernizing, such as
revolutionaries, reformers, labour and peasant leaders, as
well as innovative imperialists in education, science, and
technology.
121. Losses in efficiency are the price that must be paid
for the reorganization of activity patterns and
redistribution of wealth and income. One such loss occurs as
a consequence of devoting more resources to investment than
would be justified by the willingness of people, given the
freedom of choice, to forego present consumption of goods
and services. An objective gain, however, would partially
compensate for this in the form of a super-optimal rate of
growth of the social product. The second type of efficiency
loss results from distortions in prices and misallocations
of resources necessary for the structural redistribution of
wealth and incomes from more developed to less developed
people, sectors, and regions. A consequence of accepting
these losses is a higher rate of development.
122. A radical development strategy will consist of three
phases. The developmental growth phase stresses basic
institutional change plus a massive increase in the brute
capacity to produce. The second phase involves moving the
restructured economy onto a new and efficient path. Finally,
institutionalization of the progressive growth process is
essential.
123. The reinstitutionalization of a society along modern
lines requires a broad and persistent effort if it is to
succeed. Piecemeal reorganizations accomplished in typical
bureaucratic fashion by many cooperatives, development
banks, extension programmes, and modern educational systems
have resulted in little or no contribution to development.
However, once mobilized on a broad front and given time for
initial progress, the forces of evolution will eventually
begin to take over the modernizing revolution. At some
point, the society will have brought into being a new set of
basic institutions and the evolutionary process.
124. Once underway, the process is inevitably altered by
continuing forces of evolution and revolution. The new
cohort of professionalized occupants of responsible
intermediate roles in a modernizing society spells future
difficulty for the old modernizing elites, partially because
of the difference in values and goals perceived by the two
groups and partially because of differences in ideas about
the kind of a power structure deemed appropriate.
125. Regardless of source, an ideological strain is likely
to emerge. This is compounded by deepening tension resulting
from differences between the flexible norms of individual,
organized, consummatory behaviour and the proliferation and
tightening of productive norms. Finally, as the standard of
living improves, the perennial conflict between humanistic
and materialistic values will become more conspicuous.
126. The strategy which provides for the building of
organizations around men who, in this instance, possessed a
sense of trust and a sense of the significance of their role
in building society.
127. They note the unusual combination of policy-making,
executive, and scientific roles that accorded the
institution's top administrator important power, freedom,
and authority.
128. In the crucial early years of the institution,
considerable benefit was derived from the transfer of a
large group of scientists with a homogeneous culture from
the predecessor institution.
129. As in many other professional groups, motivation and
control were contained in professional commitments and
exercised through both discussions and the judgment of
peers.
130. The body to which the top administrator referred for
policy and strategic decisions was compact in size and
consisted of members chosen for their expertise and roles.
131. By wearing several hats at different times, key
individuals in the institution participated in the interplay
among basic science, technology, and industrial practice so
that economic progress could result.
132. The following points must be considered while creating
institutions :
# There should be a stronger commitment on the part of all
participating agencies to an expanded and long-term
programme of building institutions;
# More flexible project agreements and improved liaison
among all players dealing with institution building;
# Research on the institution building process should be
significantly increased and existing knowledge should be
utilized more effectively;
# The basic ideas that underlie the educational institutions
are highly relevant in technical assistance projects if
properly understood and employed;
# Agreement on goals and commitment to an overall strategy
by the institutions and the collaborators should be
strengthened by wider participation in project planning and
review;
# Those aspects of technical assistance programmes which
have contributed to the highly negative attitudes of many
university staff members and department heads should be
changed;
# There should be fundamental changes in orientation
programmes in order to prepare team members adequately for
their overseas assignments;
# Programmes of participant training should be more
carefully planned and more adequately supported so that they
conform to the developmental needs of host institutions;
# The educational community should exert its leadership in
developing a fuller public understanding of international
technical assistance;
133. The building of an innovative developmental institution
is never finished, i.e., it must always be in a process of
rebuilding itself, of rejuvenating its innovative powers, if
it is to be a meaningful agent of development.
134. The concepts of the Institution Building model are a
useful general framework within which to conceptualize the
rejuvenation process, but additional concepts are required.
The greatest utility of the model for already- established
institutions is the same as that for new institutions,
namely, providing guidance in devising Institution Building
strategies.
135. A large part of institutional resistance to change and
subsequent atrophy as an innovative force for development
lies in :
# the commitment by most institutions to reliable repetition
of prescribed operations; and
# the greater complementarity and operationality (the
attainment process is known and criteria for measuring
attainment are available and applied) of organizational
maintenance goals, as compared to institutional substantive
goals.
136. The key to attaining and maintaining a high level of
institutional productivity lies in maximizing the
consequentiality of the institution's products to the
societal units in which these products serve.
137. Effective linkages require management with the
following characteristics:
# periodic resurveys of all linkage possibilities;
# acceptance of responsibility for specific linkages by each
staff member; and (c) staff planning of transaction
strategies based on mutuality of benefits.
138. Most institutions, in their growth, reach a defined
plateau of competence and performance, after time, at which
level they can do very well without massive assistance.
Rather than to continue to rely upon external assistance,
when the plateau has been reached, it is preferable that the
institution proceed on its own, even though there might be
some slippage in the programme. At some later time perhaps,
when the institution is ready to move toward a higher
plateau of excellence or of programme coverage, a new
assistance project might be considered. During the interim
period, or when the project comes to a close, a thread of
relationship should be maintained between the institution
and the university. A modest exchange of professors and
students and of publications gives returns much larger than
the costs in terms of research and teaching at both ends of
the connection.
139. Development, or more modestly, social change, and the
concomitant new values, functions, technologies and action
patterns, cannot be effectively introduced and sustained in
transitional societies unless they are embedded in a
supportive network of social structures, processes, and
norms. In short, these innovative values, functions, and
technologies must be institutionalized.
140. This process takes place in and through institutional
organizations which must either be newly created or adapted
and restructured for this purpose.
141. Institutional development need not be a natural or
evolutionary process which occurs independently of human
design. In this era, new technologies and new institutional
forms are almost everywhere deliberately induced and
directed. This sense of deliberate human purpose and human
direction warrants the use of the phrase institution
building and suggests a key role for modernizing elites.
142. Institution building is thus an approach to the
development process which relies heavily on the concept of
social engineering and which stresses the leadership
functions of modernizing elite groups within that process
and the alternative action strategies available to them.
143. As development occurs, social functions or technologies
become increasingly specialized. With specialization,
interdependencies develop. The institutions incorporating
innovations are thus involved in a network of complementary
and competing relationships in their environment on which
institution building research must focus.
144. Institution building is conceived of as a generic
social process. There are elements and actions that can be
identified as generally relevant to institution building,
even though their expression will differ depending on the
type of institution and the social environment.
145. It is possible, through systematic and comparative
analysis of institution building experiences, to derive
elements of a technology of institution building that will
be useful to persons engaged in introducing innovation into
developing societies, whether they be indigenous change
agents or foreign advisors.
146. The institution building approach is :
# interdisciplinary;
# can draw few insights from Western organization theory.
Rather than assume that the prerequisites associated with
organizational efficiency prevail in traditional societies,
institution building research begins with the assumption
that deliberate efforts must be made to introduce radical
innovations into traditional societies whose cultural values
and social structures, in addition to economic and political
interests, may not initially be supportive of these changes.
147. The institution building approach is addressed to
situations in developing countries where nation building and
socioeconomic progress are overriding goals. Hence, these
goals constitute normative guides and regulators of official
doctrine and, as such, influence public policy and
programmed action.
148. Our task or action oriented model now begins to emerge,
incorporating the following components: a governing,
goal-oriented elite which bears the major responsibility for
initiating and directing the process of modernizing change;
a doctrine, or set of action commitments, which establishes,
communicates, and legitimizes norms, priorities and styles
for operating programmes; and a set of action instruments
through which communication with the community is maintained
and operating programmes are implemented.
149 Institution Building provides the means by which a
change oriented leadership can articulate with an organized
community and the community can participate in the struggle
to achieve the twin goals.
150. Development with the institutionalization of political
organizations and procedures. Rapid increases in
mobilization and participation, the principal political
aspects of modernization, undermine political institutions.
Rapid modernization produces not political development but
political decay. In order to liberate the concept of
development from the concept of modernization, political
development is defined as the institutionalization of
political organizations and purposes. This
institutionalization can be measured by an organization's
adaptability, complexity, autonomy, and coherence.
151. Two general considerations affecting the probabilities
of success in institution building are recognized:
# that the psychological and cultural characteristics of
people differ markedly and, with them, peoples abilities to
develop institutions, and
# that institutions are the products of conscious,
purposeful effort.
152. There are two methods of furthering institutional
development. One is to slow social mobilization, which
presumably creates conditions more favourable to the
preservation and strengthening of institutions. Three
methods of doing this are
# to increase the complexity of the social structure,
# to limit or reduce communications in the society, and
# to minimize competition among segments of the political
elite. The other method is to develop strategies and
directly apply them to the problem of institution building.
This creates a dilemma in that the would-be institution
builder needs personal power to create institutions, but he
cannot create institutions without relinquishing some of
this personal power.
153. In the absence of traditional political institutions,
the political party is the only modem organization that can
become a source of power and that can be effectively
institutionalized. Regardless of the type of institution
involved, the danger of over-extension of its resources in
the institution building process is considered analogous to
the danger involved in over-extending troops in a military
campaign.
154. The central object of any educational institutional
development is to embody a doctrine in an organization. This
doctrine includes norms as well as skill and/or knowledge
content.
155. The ability to interpret doctrine and to make
innovative applications of it in operating and developing a
programme of activities is probably the key indicator that
the doctrine has been institutionalized.
156. The development of an innovative institution depends
upon the creation of a structure of institutional
leadership.
157. Protecting and maintaining an institutional leadership
structure, plus a supporting cadre, in a hostile environment
may be more difficult than establishing it in the first
place. . . .
158. It is entirely possible to mobilize environmental
support for an innovative institution even if there are
sharp inconsistencies between the institution's doctrine and
the value orientation characteristic of that environment. .
. .
159. A full determination of the institutionalization of an
educational entity such as the IPA must consider the impact
upon the organization's clientele and, ultimately, of the
clientele upon the environment.
160. The Institution Building enterprise is a peculiarly
appropriate means of bringing sociology and political
science to bear upon the problems of education. However, he
argues that the environment of an educational institution is
not only the political, economic, and social setting of its
particular locality, region, or nation, but also embraces
the larger supranational environment represented by the
world of knowledge, the international canons of scholarship,
and the practice and performance of professional behaviour
that transcends national boundaries. In addition, he
maintains that the implicit assumption that the direction of
change in institution building should progress from the
relatively less to the relatively more modern should be made
explicit and dealt with accordingly.
161. Institutions may stimulate or impede behaviour leading
to economic growth by their following effects:
# the direct calculation of costs and benefits;
# relationships between production and distribution (output
and income);
# the order, predictability, and probability of economic
relationships;
# knowledge of economic opportunities; and
l motivations and values.
162. The following forces, which we categorize as prime
movers, have brought about changes :
# economic forces
# technological forces
# spiritual forces
# sociocultural forces, and
# political forces.
163. The list of main catalytic forces that accelerate
change include:
# reward-awareness;
# generation tension;
# prophetic pronouncement;
# moral indignation;
# emotional mass movement; and curiosity.
164. The following inhibiting forces that retard change are
:
# fear of taking risks;
# generation-to-generation perpetuity;
# the sacred nature of the existing order;
# rejection of individual deviation; and xenophobia.
165. The term institution is used in many ways. There has
been an organized capability to perform the important
economic, social, or political functions in a society. In
performing these functions, institutions are particularly
important in providing not only the opportunities for
developmental action, but also the necessary incentives to
encourage individuals to react to changing conditions in the
desired manner. This reflects the interdependency of
institutional arrangements and policy determination and
implementation. For example, government price policy may
provide incentives to produce more of a particular type of
commodity, but the individual entrepreneur cannot respond in
a meaningful way to this incentive without access to
adequate credit, marketing, and other institutional
services.
166. Moreover, the quality of institutions is an important
aspect that must be considered. It is not enough that an
institution simply exists in a static sense. Rather, it is
imperative that the institution be a viable, dynamic unit
generating the proper conditions for orderly change in the
society through time. The influence of institutions on the
societies they serve can either catalyze or retard economic
and social progress.
167. Institutions along with government policies are the
major variables determining what people do in developing
countries. They are prime determinants of the course of
political, social, and economic progress and offer the
greatest potential for influencing the direction of
development.
168. Economic growth is a state of increase in the national
product, without reference to income distribution. Per
capita economic growth occurs when the percentage increase
in national product is greater than the percentage increase
in population. Economic development, on the other hand, is
economic growth combined with the nurture of those culture
objects (norms, institutions, and values) necessary to make
growth continuous.
169. Modernization is the process of acquiring both
economically progressive institutions and other types of
progressive institutions as well. To acquire progressive
institutions, and thus to become modem, is very different
from having and operating such institutions, and thus to be
modern.
170. Development, or more modestly, social change, and the
concomitant new values, functions, technologies and action
patterns, cannot be effectively introduced and sustained in
transitional societies unless they are embedded in a
supportive network of social structures, processes, and
norms. In short, these innovative values, functions, and
technologies must be institutionalized.
171. This process takes place in and through institutional
organizations which must either be newly created or adapted
and restructured for this purpose.
172. Institutional development need not be a natural or
evolutionary process which occurs independently of human
design. In this era, new technologies and new institutional
forms are almost everywhere deliberately induced and
directed. This sense of deliberate human purpose and human
direction warrants the use of the phrase institution
building and suggests a key role for modernizing elites.
173. The concept institution building will be further
defined and discussed later; but, first, the term
institution requires attention.
174. The term institutions refers to organizations staffed
with personnel capable of carrying out defined, but
evolving, programmes contributing to social and economic
development and having enough continuing resources to assure
a sustained effort for establishment, acceptance, and
application of new methods and values.
175. Institution is sometimes used to refer to certain types
of organizations�. Sometimes institution refers to a quite
different phenomenon namely, to a normative principle that
culturally defines behaviour such as marriage or property.
Because of these two conflicting usages, this term has
probably caused more confusion than formal organization and
bureaucracy together. All three might well be avoided in
favour of the simple term, organization.
176. To institutionalize is to infuse with value beyond the
technical requirements of the task at hand. The prizing of
social machinery beyond its technical role is largely a
reflection of the unique way in which it fulfils personal or
group needs. Whenever individuals become attached to an
organization or a way of doing things as persons rather than
as technicians, the result is a prizing of the device for
its own sake. From the standpoint of the committed person,
the organization is changed from an expendable tool into a
valued source of personal satisfaction.
177. Organizations are technical instruments, designed as
means to definite goals. They are judged on engineering
premises; they are expendable. Institutions, whether
conceived as groups or practices, may be partly engineered,
but they have also a natural dimension. They are products of
interaction and adaptation; they become the receptacles of
group idealism; they are less readily expendable.
178 An organization which incorporates, fosters, and
protects normative relationships and action patterns and
performs functions and services which are valued in the
environment. Thus, while all institutions are organizations
of some type, not all organizations are institutions.
179. An institution is more than an organization and more
than a cultural pattern. It attracts support and legitimacy
from its environment so that it can better perform its
functions and services. This is the essential dynamic of
Institution Building.
180. To the extent that an organization succeeds over time
in demonstrating the value of its functions and having them
accepted by others as important and significant, the
organization acquires the status of an institution.
181. It should be recognized at the outset that
institutions, as used in the context of this research, are
defined in a particularistic manner. They are specific
formal organizations which over time have developed a
capacity to act as agents for the larger society by
providing valued functions and services. More than this,
they serve as models for defining legitimate normative and
value patterns, conserving and protecting them for the
larger society.
182. In dealing with the problem of how to introduce
innovative techniques in developing societies, we assume
that an effective way to do this is by creating and
supporting formal organizations which utilize these
innovations and corresponding technology in such a manner
that, over time, given changes in the existing institutional
complex of the society, these organizations take on the
mantle of institutions.
183. Institutions are special types of organizations which
embody certain values and norms, represent them in society,
and promote them. In this special meaning, organizations do
not qualify as institutions if they perform technical
functions which are purely instrumental and which do not
embody values that become normative in society. Institutions
are thus a sub-class of large-scale organizations which have
explicit, overt, purposeful programmes of discriminating and
promoting certain sorts of values.
184. Institutions are, for purposes of the present
discussion, defined as well-established and understood
organized constellations of roles which fulfil functions for
society or groups within a society. The point that must be
stressed is that institutions are organized networks of
roles with distinct social consequences. No single role
represents an institution; it is the patterned organization
of roles in an inseparable complex which makes the social
institution meaningful.
185. The term institution refers to organizations and
policies, both governmental and private. This limited
definition is used in order to select those elements in the
existing or potential social context which can be
incorporated in institutional programmes, accompanying and
supplementing investment and technological programming. Such
programmes are conceived as groups of integrated and
consciously planned institutional innovations designed to
stimulate those kinds of behaviour by management, farmers,
labour, consumers, savers, investors, and innovators which
can be expected to initiate and sustain growth.
186. Institutions are bounded, integrated, and internalized
sets of social components; ideas, concepts, symbols, rules,
statuses, relationships, and so on. By bounded we mean that
the relevance of the set of components is restricted in
certain commonly understood ways: for example, to people in
a certain geographical area or kinship group, to those
belonging to certain formal or informal organizations, to
those engaged in certain kinds of behaviour or present at
certain times or places, and so on. By integrated we mean
that there is a logical, an empirically necessary, or an
historically sanctioned interdependence, consistency, and
appropriateness among institutions and among the components
of a given institution.
187. By internalized we mean that the individuals whose
behaviour is guided by an institution understand its
components and their interdependence and that, through
emotional attachment or intellectual appreciation, there is
a measure of commitment to the institution. Institutions
thus establish and coordinate behaviour patterns, making
social action meaningful.
188. What distinguishes an institution from an organization,
is whether or not it can influence other entities in the
economy, or whether it is limited to the programmes it can
execute directly. The fact is that institutions are not
built in a vacuum. They are built only through an active,
even aggressive participation in an economy.
189. Sociologists are often neither clear nor in agreement
on the meaning of the term institution. There are those who
restrict the term to refer to the established forms or
conditions of procedure characteristic of group activity.
This implies that every group in a society has its own
characteristic values, meaning, and forms of procedure or,
every association has, in respect of its particular
interest, its characteristic institutions.
190. An institution has generalized patterns of norms which
define categories of prescribed, permitted and prohibited
behaviour in social relationships for people in interaction
with each other as members of their society and its various
subsystems and groups.
191. Following this definition, we may speak of complexes of
institutional patterns as regulating all the major
functional contexts and group structures of a social system,
economic, political, integrative, educational, cultural,
etc.
192. In another use of the term we find that the term
institution has been used both to denote specific units or
collectivities in the society, and with regard to
generalized meanings, values and broadly shared norms of
social structure and conduct. Let us distinguish between
diffused-symbolic institutions and nucleated institutions.
The first type refers to the meaning and value content of
diffused concepts like art, law, ethics, science, etc.,
whereas the second possesses tangible aspects.
193. The nucleated institutions include among others local
government, local business enterprise, newspapers, the
school, the family, etc. and refer to the nucleated
institutions as cultural concretions and explains their
origin under five points:
# First, a social institution arises out of and as a result
of repeated groupings of interacting human individuals to
elemental needs or drives (sex, hunger, fear, etc.).
# Second, common reciprocating attitudes and
conventionalized behaviour patterns develop out of the
process of interaction (affection, loyalty, cooperation,
domination, subordination, etc.).
# Third, cultural objects (traits) that embody symbolic
values in material substances are invented or fabricated and
become cue stimuli to behaviour conditioned to them (the
idol, cross, ring, flag, etc. are charged with emotional and
sentimental meanings).
# Fourth, cultural objects (traits) that embody utilitarian
values in material substances are invented or fabricated and
become the means of satisfying creature wants for warmth,
shelter, etc. (buildings, furniture, etc.).
# Fifth, preserved in oral and written language, externally
stored and handed down from one generation to the next,
there is description and specification of the patterns of
interrelationship among these elemental drives, attitudes,
symbolic culture traits, and utilitarian culture traits
(codes, charters, constitutions, franchises, etc.).
194. Variations on this classification, which distinguishes
between institutions as norms of value and conduct and
specific collectivities of people in organized interaction,
can be found in the work of other social scientists.
195. Regardless of the definitions and uses of the concept
institution, it appears that there is basic agreement on
certain elements of the phenomenon.
# Thus, the concept refers to a set way of perceiving and
doing things; institutions prescribe the norms of behaviour.
# Institutions have a degree of regularity and permanence
independent of individual actors.
# The patterns of norms as referred to in the definitions
may apply to a small group of interacting individuals or to
an entire society.
196. Adhering to these basic elements, but deviating in some
respects from the traditional sociological definitions, we
shall define institutions in this context as organizations
which embody, foster, and protect normative relationship and
action patterns and perform functions and services which are
valued in the environment. Organization as used here refers
to a consciously designed and controlled set of actions and
relationship patterns among persons in interaction toward
the achievement of certain objectives.
197. Clearly, enough variation in the connotation of the
term institution exists to require careful reading to
determine the meaning each author attaches to it. The
definition of the term has much to recommend it:
# It is useful in considering the role of institutions in
the development process and it is used modally in the
literature. However, to read all the institution building
literature with only that unique definition in mind would
distort the meaning of a majority of the works. While a
single, all-purpose definition of institution would be
convenient, it does not exist, and the literature is not
mature enough for its formulation at this time.
198. Values in the context of institution building are
assertions about facts, and determining facts depends on
values. Values cannot be rationally established or defended
but can be rationally discussed, analyzed, and understood.
199. The definition of values and the process of value
formation eliminates facts as an opposite of values; as a
result, the value-fact controversy loses much of its
substance. Why then bring it up in the first place? There
are three reasons.
# First, there seems to be much accumulated evidence that
values play indeed a most important role in the decisions
and transactions of most organizations, especially if we
include in our definition of values not only positive forces
such as goals, preferences, or the desire to reach certain
future states of affairs, but also negative forces such as
fears, doubts, or the rejection of certain future states of
affairs. If values are important factors in organizational
or administrative behaviour, then the problem of handling or
managing values and value congruence or dissonance also
becomes important; this constitutes a challenge for both
organizational theory and practice.
# The second reason is that dichotomous thinking, even if it
reflects reality insufficiently as we have seen in the
value-fact issue, can have its usefulness as an analytical
device in detecting dynamic trends and in providing
direction. It seems that viewing forces as flowing between
opposite poles is an analogy not alien to reality, provided
one views forces in flow and not static or momentary
manifestations of a force.
# The third reason, when concerned with organizations, is
that the rather untenable value-fact dichotomy leads us to a
more fruitful dichotomy which, when used as an analytical
device, seems to provide directions for value-management in
organizations which we could not find in the value-exogenous
perspective of organizations.
200. Thus, an organization is primarily a technical
instrument, a means to reach certain objectives, but never
an end in itself. The institutional approach emphasizes not
only the instrumental characteristics; nor is the focus of
analysis and action primarily on the structural, functional
and behavioural elements which are internal to the
organizational system though these are essential also.
201. In institutional analysis, we are concerned with
purposes and values which extend beyond the immediate task
at hand, with the spreading of norms which affect
participants and clientele beyond the functional and
productive specialization of the institution. Thus,
institutional values and specific relationship and action
patterns governing the performance of functions within the
institution become normative beyond the confines of the
institution itself and stable points of reference both
within the organization and for the environment. It goes
without saying that influences flow simultaneously in the
opposite direction, from the environment to the institution,
affecting the latter both in its structure as well as its
performance.
202. The institutions can influence economic development by
means of motivations and values. By values we mean
individual and collective judgments (or assumptions)
concerning what is desirable. In rational human behaviour,
values provide the motivations which impel men to choose or
avoid particular types of voluntary action.
203. In attempting to identify the psychological effect of
ideological differences, it is stated that a compilation of
very general values or attitudinal objects represents
ideology. Typically, ideology is the favourite tool in the
hands of the revolutionary elite.
204. Ideology is the individual's view of society that best
enables him to fit into it. This sociopolitical concept of
ideology implies a psychological reason for the individual's
selection. He must create his niche in society. Either he
must shape himself to fit society, or he must form his
concept of society to fit his concept of himself. Most of us
do a bit of each.
205. Ideology and passion may no longer be necessary to
sustain the class struggle within stable and affluent
democracies, but they are clearly needed in the
international effort to develop free and political
institutions in the rest of the world. It is only the
ideological class struggle in the West which is ending.
206. Ideological conflicts linked to levels and problems of
economic development and of appropriate political
institutions among different nations will last far beyond
our lifetime, and men committed to democracy can abstain
from them only at their peril.
207. Emphasizing that institution building requires more
than establishment of a new organization. It must fit into
local ways of doing things, be staffed, supported, and
wanted by host country nationals, and perform a useful
function for the society.
208. The idea of institution building is to fabricate
organizations in environments needing and perhaps desiring
change. Through accumulating necessary resources, persisting
over time, and most importantly impacting its environment,
these organizations are to be agents for change. Institution
is understood in Parsonian terms as referring to normative
patterns which define proper, legitimate or expected modes
of action or social relationships, and also as a change
inducing and change-protecting formal organization.
209. Institution Building involves the introduction and
establishment of organizations which in turn induce changes
in patterns of action and belief within a society. Most
commonly, these changes are associated with new
technologies, both physical and social. The crux of the
Institution Building process is moving from introduction to
establishment.
210. It is frequently difficult to distinguish between
institutional change and institution building. Changes in
external and internal conditions, in leadership and
resources make all organizations change and adapt over time.
211. An organization which does not have this adaptive
capacity is not likely to survive. Assuming that the
functions it fulfils are still required by society it will
be replaced by another organization or organizations which
are more responsive to the changing needs. Such adaptive
change of organizations, however, is conceptually different
from institution building. Institution building refers to
the deliberate infusion of fundamentally different values,
functions and technologies requiring changes in the
institution's doctrine, in its structural and behavioural
patterns.
212. In general, it can be said that organizational
institutionalization is more meaningful than the expression
institution building because of its neutral connotation. For
one thing it avoids the modernizing bias contained in the
rationale of institutional building studies, thus increasing
the universalistic value of the model developed so far, and
it allows the latter to be applied to a wider array of
organizations that may not , have any connection with
modernization in the cross-cultural, comparative
administrative sense.
213. Regardless of the specific terms used, the institution
building process contains the basic elements of institution
variables, linkages, and transactions. The first of these
will be discussed in the next section and the remaining two
in the following section.
214. Initially in this section the major institution
variables will be defined in both extensive and shortened
form. Subsequently, additional definitions of each of the
major institutional variables will be provided. Throughout,
the focus will be on parameters internal to an institution.
215. Viewing them as the elements necessary and sufficient
to explain the systemic behaviour of an institution, let us
describe the five institution variables as follows:
# Leadership, defined as the group of persons who are
actively engaged in the formulation of the doctrine and
programme of the institution and who direct its operations
and relationships with the environment. Leadership is
considered to be the single most critical element in
institution building because deliberately induced change
processes require intensive, skilful, and highly committed
management both of internal and of environmental
relationships.
# Leadership is considered primarily as a group process in
which various roles such as representation, decision-making,
and operational control can be distributed in a variety of
patterns among the leadership group. The leadership group
comprises both the holders of formally designated leadership
positions as well as those who exercise important continuing
influence over the institution's activities. A number of
leadership properties are identified as variables, among
them political viability, professional status, technical
competence, organizational competence, and continuity. High
ranking on each of these properties is expected to correlate
with leadership success.
216. Doctrine, defined as the specification of values,
objectives, and operational methods underlying social
action. Doctrine is regarded as a series of themes which
project, both within the organization itself and in its
external environment, a set of images and expectations of
institutional goals and styles of action. Among the
subvariables which seem to be significant for the
effectiveness of doctrine are specificity, relationship to
(or deviation from) existing norms, and relationship to
(emerging) societal preferences and priorities.
217. Programme, defined as those actions which are related
to the performance of functions and services constituting
the output of the institution. The programme thus is the
translation of doctrine to concrete patterns of action and
the allocation of energies and other resources within the
institution itself and in relationship to the external
environment. The sub-variables which were identified as
relevant to the programme or output function of the
institution are consistency, stability, and contribution to
societal needs.
218. Resources, defined as the financial, physical, human,
technological, (and informational) inputs of the
institution. Quite obviously the problems involved in
mobilizing and in ensuring the steady and reliable
availability of these resources affect every aspect of the
institution's activities and represent an important
preoccupation of all institutional leadership. Two very
broad sub-variables are identified in the original
conceptualization availability and sources.
219. Internal Structure, defined as the structure and
processes established for the operation of the institution
and for its maintenance. The distribution of roles within
the organization, its internal authority patterns and
communications systems, the commitment of personnel to the
doctrine and programme of the organization, affect its
capacity to carry out programmatic commitments. Among the
sub-variables identified in this cluster are identification
(of participants with the institution and its doctrine),
consistency, and adaptability.
220. Let us provide the following shortened definitions of
the major institution variables:
# Leadership: The group of persons who direct the
institution's internal operations and manage its relations
with the external environment.
# Doctrine: The expression of the institution's major
purposes, objectives, and methods of operations.
# Programme: The activities performed by the institution in
producing and delivering outputs of goods or services.
# Resources: The physical, financial, personnel,
informational, and other inputs which are required for the
functioning of the institution.
# Internal Structure: The technical division of labour, and
distribution of authority, and the lines of communication
within the institution through which decisions are taken and
action is guided and controlled.
221. Leadership : Since numerous volumes have been written
on the subject of leadership, the term cannot be treated
extensively here. The art of the creative leader is the art
of institution-building, the reworking of human and
technological materials to fashion an organism that embodies
new and enduring values.
222. In short, the role or position of the leadership in the
social structure bears on its channels of communication, its
power and influence in the functional area and the
environment.
223. Motivation: Beyond the actual motivation of the
leadership, we are also concerned with the motivations
ascribed by the environment.
224. Functional competence: This refers to the technical
competence in the functional area of the institution as it
is represented in the leadership group.
225. Organization competence: By organization competence is
meant talent for combining personnel and resources into
dynamic, self-sustaining enterprises.
226. Role Distribution: Which indicates whether the
potentially available complementarity among the members of
the leadership unit is in fact fully used.
227. Continuity: Without continuity in the leadership group
there are likely to be changes in values and approaches
which are detrimental to the consistent and systematic
building of an institution. Besides, it hampers the
development of the necessary competences and their
application to a given situation.
228. Institution Builder is not simply the counterpart of
homo economicus. He does not merely buy cheap and sell dear.
Rather he is an entrepreneur, combining factors of
organizational production in such a way as to produce valued
outputs. These in turn yield him resources which may be used
to further the process of organizational growth. He is one
who has a canny sense both of his market opportunities and
his own objectives. He finds new sources of resources and
support, new combinations which are more productive, or new
uses for them which yield greater value of output.
229. The characteristic of leadership, then, which
distinguishes it with success is an acute faculty for
strategy, that is, the use of resources over time. A person
occupying a position of authority who lacks a sense of the
productivity of time may well squander or dissipate the
resources which accrue to his position. Many persons in
positions of authority have resources at their disposal. Yet
often by neither seizing nor making opportunities for
organizational growth they forfeit the possibility of
strengthening the organization by increasing its outputs or
increasing its inputs.
230. Doctrine: Since doctrine has proven to be a difficult
concept because of its abstract nature, the following
statement justifies its nature :
# Some of the recent literature on institution building has
used the term doctrine instead of mission or objectives. At
first we were tempted to avoid this term as less familiar
and more ambiguous than the alternative terms which have
become well established in the literature on administration,
particularly on business policy. On second thought, however,
it appeared to us that doctrine is a useful concept; it goes
beyond the broad objectives, which normally are short
statements of the major goals to be sought. The doctrine
takes the objectives and converts them into a more concrete
set of policies and guidelines which give definite direction
for the institution's activities.
231. Doctrine is used as synonymous with ideology, more
specifically applied ideology. Put in this way, doctrine is
closely associated with autonomy in the sense that doctrine
may also mean rules and values which are built in the
organization in such a way as to justify its functions and
existence.
232. Doctrine is also the self-propelling, self-renewing
value system that gives an organization a life line
independent of the corporate sum reached by adding up the
qualities of its individual members.
233. It is the function of doctrine to establish normative
linkages between the old and the new, between establishment
and innovators, such as would legitimize innovations which
came with the new organization. Doctrine itself could not
perform this function; yet it could provide connections
which made organizational innovations appear less new, less
threatening, and correspondingly more legitimate. It could
tip the balance.
234. At the same time that it might perform this function
with those publics who would ultimately either
institutionalize or reject innovations, it could also
provide institutional leaders with norms or standards which
could guide them in projecting programmes, establishing
priorities, and assessing accomplishments. It could provide
a sense of solidarity and progress so important to morale.
235. Programme: Programme represents the translation of
doctrine into practical activities of organization. Given
the scarcity of resources, a programme represents a
statement of priorities or a sequence of resource
allocations judged to be most productive for attaining
organizational goals.
236. Those planned and organized actions that are related to
the performance of functions and services, i.e., the
production of the outputs of the institution (teaching,
research, extension). Programmes are designed to fulfil the
goals of the organization as set forth in legal mandates,
official doctrine, and needed and demanded by the
environment to be served.
237. Resources : The inputs of the organization that are
converted into products or services and into increases in
institutional capability. It includes not only financial
resources that can be used for construction of physical
plant, equipment and facilities and employment of personnel
services, but also such intangibles as legal and political
authority and information about technologies and the
external environment.
238. Resource availability: The physical and human inputs
which are available or can be obtained for the functioning
of the institution and the performance of its programme.
239. Sources: The sources in the environment from which
resources have been obtained and alternative sources to
which the institution has access.
240. We think of resources as the physical, human, and
technological inputs of the institution. Their availability
to the innovative organization is at the crux of our
studies, as is the identification of the actual and
alternative sources of these resource flows, and changes in
them.
241. Internal Structure: Our concern is here with the
mechanisms and modes of control, communication, and decision
making within the institution. The structure of the
institution, i.e., role specification, and the distribution
of authority and decision making, affects programme
performance and maintenance of the system.
242. Similarly, the structure of the institution and the
processes of communication and decision making affect the
identification with the institution on the part of the
participants, as well as the control and influence exercised
by the leadership. Where organizational structure and
process deviates from the established norms within the
environment, the institution's internal structure will
affect the relations of the institution with the external
world. It can be stated, then, that internal structure is a
significant element for institution building analysis in at
least four areas:
# programme performance;
# system maintenance;
# identification of the participants with the institution;
and
# relationships with the environment.
243. That organization of resources into formal and informal
patterns of authority, division of responsibility among the
different units of the organization, channels of
communication, and means of resolving differences and
formulating consensus on priorities, policies, and
procedures.
244. Linkages and Transactions: Because the basic purpose of
the institution is to induce change in its environment
linkages and transactions take on a particular importance,
and indeed the conscious attention given to this thrust
towards the environment has given the Institution Building
perspective a distinctive appeal.
245. The interdependencies which exist between an
institution and other relevant parts of the society. The
institutionalized organization does not exist in isolation;
it must establish and maintain a network of
complementarities in its environment in order to survive and
to function. The environment, in turn, is not regarded as a
generalized mass, but rather as a set of discrete structures
with which the subject institution must interact.
246. The institution must maintain a network of exchange
relationships with a limited number of organizations and
engage in transactions for the purposes of gaining support,
overcoming resistance, exchanging resources, structuring the
environment, and transferring norms and values. Particularly
significant are the strategies and tactics by which
institutional leadership attempts to manipulate or
accommodate to these linkage relationships.
247. To facilitate analysis, four types of linkages are
identified:
# enabling linkages with organizations and social groups
which control the allocation of authority and resources
needed by the institution to function;
# functional linkages, with those organizations performing
functions and services which are complementary in a
production sense, which supply the inputs and which use the
outputs of the institution;
# normative linkages, with institutions which incorporate
norms and values (positive or negative) which are relevant
to the doctrine and programme of the institution;
# diffused linkages, with elements in the society which
cannot clearly be identified by membership in formal
organizations.
248. Linkages: Patterned relationships between the
institution and other organizations and groups in the
environment. These relationships comprise the exchange of
resources, services, and support and may involve various
degrees of cooperation or competition.
249. Enabling: Relationships with organizations that control
the allocation of authority to operate or of resources.
250. Functional: Relationships with organizations that
supply needed inputs or which take outputs.
251. Normative: Relationships with organizations that share
an interest in social purposes.
252. Diffuse: Relationships with individuals and groups not
associated in formal organizations.
253. For the creation of a new institution which introduces
new values, relationship and action patterns, and social and
physical technologies, the institutional linkages are highly
significant. The process of institution building depends to
a large extent on the number and kinds of linkages which the
organization has with its environment and how these linkages
are affected.
254. A significant aspect of institution building is the
structuring of an environment which supports and is
complementary to the values, functions and services of the
new institution. The creation of a new institution or the
reconstitution of an existing institution will affect the
role boundaries of the interdependent complex of
functionally complementary organizations. Innovations which
are introduced within and by the new institution will affect
the external relations and internal processes of one or more
organizations in the functional complex. Thus, concomitant
changes may be required in the environment if the new
institution is to adhere to its values, carry out its
programme, and attain its objectives.
255. Let us discuss the elements of an organization's
environment which may resist, i.e., prevent or make more
costly, the desired changes. The term linkages may itself
also be too abstract. What is implied in that description is
exchange relationships exchanging resources, gaining
support, establishing legitimacy, etc. This
conceptualization points up the consideration most critical
for institutionalization the establishment and maintenance
of interdependencies which exist between an institution and
other relevant parts of the society. It also makes clearer,
on the one hand, the importance of reciprocity, and, on the
other hand, of asymmetry in relationships which characterize
institutions. The notion of enabling linkages cloaks both
these distinctions.
256. An institution provides something in return for its
inputs, whether it is tangible and immediate or not. But it
is more an institution and less an organization to the
extent that others are more dependent on it than it on them.
257. Linkage refers to the source of resources from the
environment. This ambiguity is to be avoided by identifying
resource exchanges or flows as linkages and by speaking
separately of groups, organizations or sectors in the
environment with which linkages can be established.
258. The chief distinction between the institutions we are
considering and business enterprises is that the market is
not usually expected to provide full financial support. The
institution is dependent upon government subsidies,
foundation grants, and private donations to supplement
whatever fees it collects. Winning support from the market
requires a wide range of marketing activities which must be
planned. Winning support from government agencies requires
an analysis of points of access to the governmental
structure and the planning of negotiations with the
appropriate agencies. Similarly, plans must be made for
approaches to foundations or private donors.
259. Some of the systemic linkages bind the organization to
other organizations and social groups in an enabling manner.
Some organizations, groups, and personalities control the
decision-making processes which bear on the allocation of
authority and resources which are essential for the
innovative organization to function at all. Through these
enabling linkages, the change agents seek to further their
cause. The innovative organization is dependent entirely in
its continued functioning on the maintenance of minimally
satisfactory relations with other societal units with which
it is linked in an enabling sense.
260. There are also functional linkages. These bind the
organization with others who may be performing functions and
services complementary to the innovative organization. They
supply the inputs, and the organizational outputs are
directed to such functionally-linked units. Both inputs and
outputs are generally some mixes of symbols, people, and
materials. Patterns of support become manifest in inputting
the right kind, of the right quantities, and at the needed
times. Patterns of support will also become manifest in the
acceptance and utilization of the outputs of the
organization.
261. There are also normative linkages. They specify the
organization's relations with institutions which incorporate
norms and values relevant to the doctrine and programme of
the organization. Many norms and values are thus protected
by existing religious and political organizations even
though they are not tied to the innovation in either an
enabling or functional sense. Depending on the
characteristics of the linkages, they may enhance or hamper
the institution-building process.
262. Finally, there are diffused linkages. Certain patterns
of dependency exist vis-a-vis the various population
aggregates. The innovative organization is either directly
or indirectly affected by diffused support or resistance.
The problem of diffused linkages thus concerns such issues
as those of public opinion, and the relations with the
larger public as mediated by the various mass media of
communication and other channels for the crystallization of
individual and aggregate opinion not reflected in formal
institutions of a society.
263. It is possible to conceive of the entire process of
organization environment relations in terms of transactions
exchanges of goods and services, and of power and influence.
From an organization viewpoint, transactions are the
relational activities through which resources and mandates
are procured and purposes are pursued. Transactions are the
substance of an entity's linkages with its environment; they
may lead to organizational growth or attenuation; and they
shape as well as manifest institutional qualities.
264. Institutionalization: The question of when the
institution building process has been completed frequently
arises. Criteria for identifying that point have been
suggested by a large number of scholars in the field. In
fact, a substantial portion of the
institutional-organizational literature deals with this
concept of institutionalization.
265. The thrust of the institution building theory concerns
the locking in of the organization into its environment. As
the outputs come to have perceived instrumental value by
clientele groups in the environment and/or as the
organization acquires intrinsic value vis a vis those
clientele groups, it is becoming institutionalized in the
environment.
266. Institutionalization is the process by which
organizations and procedures acquire value and stability.
Institutionalization is the process through which human
behaviour is made predictable and patterned.
267. Institutionalization consists of the following three
basic processes:
# the organization of new clusters of roles,
# the diffusion of the symbolic meaning of roles and
clusters of roles, and
# the infusion with value, a process in which, as the newly
organized patterns continue to be successful, they take on
value in and of themselves.
268. In recent times it has become common to refer to the
assistance provided by technologically advanced countries in
organizing administrative structures in developing countries
as institution building. This monstrosity of administrative
nomenclature reflects ignorance of the sociological meaning
of institutions. Buildings can be built as can hierarchies
of formal roles within formal institutions; institutions are
complexes of roles that develop in spontaneous processes.
269. Formal administrative units are usually the product of
conscious and rational behaviour; institutions are only
rarely so. Formal organizations become institutionalized,
however, when they take on symbolic and normative meaning.
270. The integration of expectations of the actors is a
matter of the degree, not a matter of pressure, and that
integration comes through a high degree of interaction. When
an organization became an institution, then the organization
had been transformed into something with greater values and
relevance to its own society.
271. The concept of institutionality denotes that at least
certain relationships and action patterns incorporated in
the organization are normative both within the organization
and for other social units, and that some support and
complementarity in the environment have been attained.
272. Within this rather generalized definition a number of
tests of institutionality are identified, among them ability
to survive a necessary but not sufficient condition of
institutionality; being viewed in its environment as having
intrinsic value which in turn can be tested by the autonomy
the institution has gained; the influence which it
exercises; and the spread effect of its activities whether
specific relationships and action patterns embodied in the
organization have become normative for other social units
with which it interacts.
273. The end-state of institution-building efforts
characterized by the following conditions:
# a viable organization has been established which
incorporates innovations;
# the organization and the innovations it represents have
been accepted and taken up by relevant groups in the
environment.
274. The process through which values and goals come to be
shared and social relationships and actions become
normatively regulated is defined as institutionalization. In
other words, when values, goals, social relationships and
processes evoke patterned responses among the participants
in an interaction process, they have been institutionalized.
275. Institutionalization is the process through which
organizations are given structure and social action and
interaction are made predictable. Through
institutionalization human behaviour is made predictable and
patterned, social systems are given the elements of
structure and process of function. As each invention or
practice is accepted or rejected as part of the group's
life, institutionalization of relationships concerning it
takes place.
276. Institutionalization is the patterning of social
structure and processes. It appears that he does not view
the value aspect of a new invention or practice as being
institutionalized. In our view the acceptance of an
invention or practice is in itself an institutionalization
process. The acceptance of a new technology is not only a
cognitive, rational process. It involves attaching
significance, utility, or value by the members of the group,
so that their behaviour toward it can be determined and
relevant social structures and processes can develop.
Institutionalization is to infuse with value beyond the
technical requirements of the task at hand.
277. One of the most unfortunate residues from colonialism
in developing nations is the fact that colonial institutions
often came to be valued for their own sakes, to be seen as
having some intrinsic value which raised them above the
challenge of assessment in terms of their usefulness in
fulfilling social purposes.
278. Once an institution is so viewed, attempts to alter it
become singularly difficult. The near-mystical sense of
intrinsic value which has been generated precludes a call
upon rational bases for change, and outmoded institutions
remain as barriers to development. The important ingredient
in the institutionality sought for development purposes is
that the organization, while retaining its own identity, not
lose its capacity to adapt to changing circumstances.
279. One of the most difficult tasks which the many
institutions have faced as an agency for social change was
that of de-institutionalizing educational patterns which
many strategically placed persons continued to justify as
having merit in themselves rather than as having relevance
in a particular social context or being answerable to the
instrumental test of how well they served social purposes.
280. When we speak of institutionality it is of a human
phenomenon that we are speaking; of the success of a human
organization in meeting the hopes and aspirations of the
people it serves, in capturing or being captured by their
dreams, in becoming valued.
281. Institutionality is, of course, not only a matter of
what professional educators who have devoted a lifetime to
the shaping of society think and feel; it is a matter of
what the new generation of teachers think, what the
politicians and kingmakers accept, expect, and reward. It is
a matter of what its own immediate offspring (or products in
the terminology of the modern economic world) feel and think
about their parent.
282. The essence of institutionality is meaningfulness. An
entity is an institution to the extent that it is meaningful
to its participants to those directly involved in it, and
those who perceive themselves as being affected by it.
283. Meaningfulness is not itself a highly meaningful term.
In a broad manner of speaking, a meaningful entity confers
something upon its participants and it is valued as a source
of value. An institution may grant status. More basically,
it may interpret existence and grant identities which have
status components.
284. It may articulate and enforce acceptable rules by which
to regularize conduct and premises by which to perceive and
interpret phenomena. An institution may confer competence
upon participants who may value it for its personal effects
upon themselves their personalities and their abilities to
attain fulfilment. It may be a prime means for the assertion
of values cherished by participants particularly those with
important roles within the institution.
285. To the extent, however, that an organization is merely
perceived as one of a series of alternative instruments by
which values may be asserted and conferred, and to the
extent that the particular instrument is seen as having few
distinguishing attributes that make it more desirable or
preferable to equally available means for the enhancement of
value to the extent that this circumstance attains,
prospects for distinctive institutionalization are limited.
286. Thus, it is helpful to define as institutionalized
capacity the work that an organization can perform under
specific future conditions which is not fundamentally
dependent upon the incumbency of any particular individual
within the organization. This capacity inherent in the
organization stands in sharp contrast to what might be
called personalized capacity which depends essentially upon
the incumbency of particular individuals.
287. The institutionalizing process adheres to certain
postulates.
# First, society consists of an institutional structure in
which the institutions interact with each other.
# Second, as a result of the relationships between
institutions, values and norms emerge which determine the
functional behaviour and structural composition of the
institutions.
# Third, it is a process in which change may be consciously
introduced through creating new institutions for this very
purpose.
288. One test of institutionality consists in an
organization's ability to survive. This may, of course, not
suffice. Survival at the cost of compromising and forfeiting
most of the innovative elements would hardly establish the
viability of innovative organizations.
289. Furthermore, the survival of an organization qua
organization need not be at issue at all. Other
institutional arrangements may become the receptacles and
protectors of the new values, functions, actions, and
technologies. The original organizational format may come to
an end of its useful societal function, and its redesign or
even the dissolution of the organization may become both
necessary and desirable.
290. The second test of institutionalization, as a process,
concerns the extent to which an innovative organization
comes to be viewed by its environment as having intrinsic
value. Some of the parameters of this test include autonomy
and influence. The former has to do with the capacity of the
organization to control its own destiny, and thus to
establish rules and procedures which may be independent from
the larger system of which it is a part; the latter deals
with an organization's capacity to acquire and use resources
without being subject to detailed scrutiny of specific
operational items; and it has to do with the organization's
ability to defend itself against attacks and encroachments
on its values and its patterns of behaviour by falling back
on the acknowledged intrinsic value of the organization.
291. The problem of influence, in turn, has to do with the
degree of impact which an innovative organization can wield
within the society in its particular functional area of
responsibilities, and with the extent to which it can
enlarge or confine its sphere of action both within the
organization and outside.
292. The third major test of institutionality concerns the
extent to which the innovative patterns embodied in the
organization become normative for other social units. This
is a way of looking at the diffusion- or spread-effect of
the innovations thus introduced into the larger social
system.
293. Viewing the concept of institutionality in terms of the
extent to which an institution's relevant publics prize it,
the following criteria of institutionality has been
developed:
# the use made by publics of organizational outputs and
services,
# verbal approval from these publics,
# survival and growth of the organization,
# support from other organizations,
# autonomy, and
# spread of innovative norms to others within the
environment.
294. Technical Assistance in Institution Building: A rather
extensive amount of literature exists concerning technical
assistance. Only that portion of it that is explicitly
focused on institution building is included here.
295. Technical assistance is first of all purposive; it can
be easily separated from traditional diffusion and
acculturation which has been occurring among cultures for
thousands of years.
296. Technical assistance is cooperative. It requires
agreement on purpose and means, between a donor agency and a
recipient government. Either party participating in
technical assistance is free to withdraw or to allow
activities to languish until they are terminated.
297. Technical assistance involves an international transfer
of knowledge and skill through individuals or agencies of a
donor, and with a defined relationship to individuals,
groups or organizations of a recipient in the accomplishment
of mutually agreed objectives.
298. Technical assistance carries the distinct implication
that:
# The change is to be facilitated by a group of foreign
technicians for the specific purpose of building or altering
an indigenous institution;
# The change process is to be deliberate, induced and rapid.
The significance of this can be appreciated by observing
that intercultural change is common in history and
institutions are continually changing, even autonomously.
# The characteristic of technical assistance programmes that
make them unusual is that they specifically set out to
telescope these long-time, autonomous processes into a
short-run, deliberate procedure, largely under the volition
of the changer.
l An abbreviated definition of technical assistance is
provided as the inputs, usually coming from a second
country.
299. Revolutionary elites have frequently sponsored the
transference of many kinds of non-indigenous organizational
forms, notably factories, armies, bureaucracies, and
schools. In these, officials have endeavoured to create by
mass education the requisite occupational skills with little
thought given to the subtle connections between discrete
occupational roles or to the social relationships of workers
and staff. Technical assistance programmes should deal with
these social connections, but most often training focuses on
inculcating the required technical skills and not on the
interactions among individuals possessing those skills.
300. Systems, Strategies and Tactics: In a small but
significant portion of the literature institution building
is viewed from a systems perspective. As a consequence, some
of the concepts of systems analysis are worth defining.
301. System theory is basically concerned with problems of
relationships, of structure, and of interdependence rather
than with the constant attributes of objects.
302. Older formulations of system constructs dealt with the
closed systems of the physical sciences, in which relatively
self-contained structures could be treated successfully as
if they were independent of external forces. But living
systems, whether biological organisms or social
organizations, are acutely dependent upon their external
environment and so must be conceived of as open systems.
303. Our theoretical model for the understanding of
organizations is that of an energic input-output system in
which the energic return from the output reactivates the
system. Social organizations are flagrantly open systems in
that the input of energies and the conversion of output into
further energic input consist of transactions between the
organization and its environment.
304. The use of system here, as an assemblage of elements
that have ordered and recurrent patterns of
interrelationships built around definable objectives or
purposes, is not dissimilar to its usage by economists and
sociologists. The systems view may be used at different
levels of aggregation and for various purposes.
Organizations, and often, groups of organizations, interact
as systems.
305. In this context let us define a system as a bounded,
goal-directed social unit consisting of a set of
interdependent elements and maintaining an exchange
relationship with the environment. Interdependence specifies
the determinate relationship among the variables as
contrasted with random variability. Elements refers to all
physical and social phenomena, be they concrete physical
objects, structural relationships, or processes necessary
for the operation of the system. For analytical purposes we
are only concerned with conceptually identifiable variables,
either given to measurement or definable in some other
meaningful manner.
306. A feature of the system approach is that it clarifies
the relationship of functionally related phenomena,
regardless of the categorization of the variables in the
system by classes of objects, processes or functions in the
aggregate sense in a larger universe. Another aspect of the
system approach is that it allows for the analysis of
interaction and interdependence of otherwise conceptually
disparate elements and the effect of changes of one variable
on others. Although the elements or variables of a system
are interacting and interdependent, they are not viewed as
being in a state of constant equilibrium. If, however, the
state of one variable in the system undergoes a change, then
to continue functioning-one or more other elements must also
change, either in nature or in their intra-system
relationship. This, in fact, helps to define the system.
307. Two more specifications must be made about systems in
terms of their relevance to development theory. In the first
place development is action-oriented. Thus, we are more
concerned with the dynamic aspect of production or output of
the system, acting upon certain inputs. The system in which
we are interested, in other words, is an instrumentality
with goal-orientation. Secondly, our systems are open, they
are in interaction with their environment; the variables are
subject to influences from outside, while the systems as
entities interact with other systems.
308. The best approach to a system is to identify the
trouble spots, and especially the places where there is
waste, e.g., unnecessarily high costs, and then proceed to
remove the inefficiency.
309. There is an objective way to look at a system and to
build a model of the system that describes how it works. The
science that is used is sometimes mathematics, sometimes
economics, sometimes behavioural (e.g., psychology and
sociology).
310. The systems are people, and the fundamental approach to
systems consists of first looking at the human values:
freedom, dignity, privacy. Above all, they say, the systems
approach should avoid imposing plans, i.e., intervention of
any kind.
311. Any attempt to lay out specific and rational plans is
either foolish or dangerous or downright evil. The correct
approach to systems is to live in them, to react in terms of
one's experience, and not to try to change them by means of
some grandiose scheme or mathematical model. There are all
kinds of anti-planners, but the most numerous are those who
believe that experience and cleverness are the hallmarks of
good management.
312. One element of systems analysis that tends to be common
in each of these schools of thought (at least in the first
three) and that is applicable for institution building is
feedback.
313. As the system affects the environment, Systems gather
information about how they are doing. The information is
then fed back into the system as inputs to guide and steer
its operation. This feedback is essential for the
maintenance of goodwill between the system and its
environment. Thus institutions aspire to attain both
internal and external equilibrium, and goodwill for their
own survival.
314. The basic element of this feedback process involves:
# the orderly collection of information about the
functioning of a system;
# the reporting of this information into the system;
# the use of information for making further adjustments.
315. The agent of change places himself into a position to
receive and evaluate information about the significance of
the client system�s behaviour. He then transmits this
information to the client system in order to stimulate an
awareness of the need for change.
316. Although not always used in a systems context, a number
of definitions of strategy and, to a lesser extent, tactics
are found in the literature. Several of these are worthy of
note.
317. For the effective use and maximum impact of technical
assistance resources, something more than gross guesswork is
needed in institution-building efforts. Borrowing from
military terminology, perhaps what is really required is a
strategy a technical assistance institution building
strategy. As commonly used, a strategy is a planned dynamic
sequence of actions directed toward the achievement of
determinate objectives. The strategy is future-oriented,
sequential, goal directed, time bound, and reflects the full
sweep of cognitive and valuational considerations. For
technical assistance projects, strategy thus denotes a plan
for sequencing technical assistance activities to achieve
specific institution-building objectives.
318. The concept of a technical assistance strategy is
applicable at several different levels within any given
institution-building project. One type of strategy might
govern the day-to-day actions of technical personnel. Such a
strategy would serve as a cookbook for individual
technicians. It would consider aspects such as personal
adjustment to foreign cultures, establishing social and
technical rapport with host institution personnel,
developing effective counterpart relationships, guidelines
for effective advisory techniques and the like.
319. Another type of strategy might serve as a guide to
administrative personnel in institution-building projects.
Its concern would be optimal institutional organization,
personnel administration, programme structure and similar
issues.
320. Strategy is also the pattern of objectives, purposes,
or goals and major policies and plans for achieving those
goals, stated in such a way as to define what business the
company is in or is to be in and the kind of company it is
to be. This definition will serve our purpose if we
substitute the word "institution" for the word company.
Strategy is concerned with the major decisions, usually
long-term in their implications, which set the general
direction of the institution.
321. Another purpose of strategic planning is from the point
of view of implementation, the most important function of
strategy is to serve as the focus of organizational effort,
as the object of commitment, and as the source of
constructive motivation and self-control in the organization
itself.
322. Strategic planning of institutions involves a series of
major decisions which do not occur in a definite sequence
but, rather, overlap. The planning is not necessarily formal
and systematic; in general practice, even in progressive
business firms, it consists of both predetermined lines of
action and a series of ad hoc decisions. In fact, one of the
major issues in planning is the appropriate degree of
predetermination as opposed to maintenance of flexibility to
meet changing and unforeseeable situations.
323. In general terms strategy refers to the planning and
directing of operations; while tactics relates to the
maneuvering of forces into positions of advantage. Both
aspects involve manipulation and should be treated somewhat
together. Manipulation is the substitution of judgement in
such a way that those influenced are not aware that it is
happening. Although this process may be known later, it is
not known while the manipulation process is taking place.
Manipulation is accomplished by a controlled distortion of
the appearance of reality as it is seen by those affected.
The actions of those influenced are based on their own
judgement of what they perceive, but they are permitted to
see only those things that are calculated to call out the
kind of judgement desired by the control agent.
324. Strategies: These deal with the main forces of planned
organizational change; they determine the general direction
along which the change movement should be directed with a
view to achieving the best results with the developing
correlation of forces.
325. Tactics: These are part of strategy (or strategies),
subordinate to it and serving it. They are methods used to
achieve the directive of strategy. As such, they demand a
constant appraisal of existing social potentialities and
must be adjusted according to the rise and decline of social
forces. The implementer of change must devise tactics best
able to promote the overall objectives of the fundamental
strategy. It is never really possible to say where tactics
leave off and strategy begins, but the distinction does
exist between day-to-day operations and broad policy
directives.
326. In addition to the concepts discussed above, there are
numerous other terms that must be specifically defined in
order to thoroughly understand individual contributions to
the institution building literature. A number of the
important terms are presented below, although this is not an
exhaustive list, rather this is only an illustrative list :
# Change Agent: One who deliberately works toward inducing
change through creative thinking and innovations.
# Client System: This major class heading refers to the
specific system, community, organization or group that
requests help by an agent of change and desires change in
order to achieve improved performance.
# Innovations: New technologies, new patterns of behaviour,
or changes in relationships among individuals or groups.
# Normative: Relationships with organizations that share an
interest in social purposes.
# Openness: The belief that change is desirable and
possible. Willingness and readiness to accept outside help.
Willingness and readiness to listen to needs of others and
to give help. Social climate favourable to change.
# Structure: The degree of Systematic Organization and
Coordination:
# of the resource system
# of the user system
# of the dissemination-utilization strategy.
# Synergy: The number, variety, frequency, and persistence
of forces that can be mobilized to produce a knowledge
utilization effect.
# Variables: The various ingredients or elements that
identify each institution in varying degrees are referred to
as institution variables, which are essentially concerned
with the organization itself, and the linkage variables,
which are mainly concerned with external relations.
327. The cost of an institution consists of the pain felt by
the power group in forming it. This may include sacrifice of
resources, prestige, values, or even life (in a revolution).
Cost also includes the effort to overcome the resistance of
others, by either coercion or persuasion. Such cost may
include the attempt to increase the cost to others of
maintaining archaic institutions that conflict with the ones
the power groups wish to establish.
328. Institutions are also the suppliers of services.
Changes in these services and, hence, indirectly through
them in institutions that produce them, may constitute the
prime targets of growth-sensitive power groups.
329. The institution is treated as a supplier of a service
which has an economic value. It is assumed that the process
of growth alters the demand for the service and that this
alteration in the demand brings about a disequilibrium
between the demand, and supply measured in terms of long-run
costs and returns.
330. Each value sacrifice thus involves both cost and
benefit. Values that are more cherished are more costly.
They will be sacrificed only if the benefit is great. Less
cherished values are easy to give up, but they may or may
not yield much increment in product.
331. Ideology lies among the values difficult (hence costly)
to change. Since institutions conforming to divergent
ideologies may be equally effective, it is sometimes not
necessary to sacrifice an ideology; rather, the institution
conforming more closely to it is selected.
332. Where two institutions are not perfectly substitutable
for each other, the one with the greater marginal output in
proportion to its costs will be selected.
333. The takeoff period is one of tension, as
growth-sensitive groups vie with growth-resistant groups for
support. The danger of violence lies in the fact that social
institutions have not been formed to cope with this type of
conflict. Sometimes growth-sensitive groups select coercive
instruments in order to eliminate an opponent who would
otherwise not join in the consensus. If he is eliminated
completely (e.g., executed or permanently exiled), this ploy
may be successful. The principal problem of violent
revolution, however, is that it is impossible to eliminate
all opponents completely. Revolution often divides people
more than it unites them, making their absorption into the
consensus even more difficult later.
334. The takeoff period is further complicated by conflicts
among growth-sensitive groups, principally over how
political power and increments of national product will be
shared. Inability to resolve or manage these conflicts
lengthens the takeoff period, preventing or delaying the
formation of post-takeoff values and institutions.
335. Thus it may be concluded that the institutionalization
of a system creates the possibility that anti-systems, or
groups with negative orientations toward its premises, will
develop within it. While the nature and strength of such
anti-systems may vary, as between different institutional
(i.e., religious, political) systems and between different
types within each, and while they may often remain latent
for very long periods of time, they also constitute
important foci of change, under propitious conditions.
336. The existence of such contradictions or conflicts among
the different institutional spheres and among different
groups does not, of course, preclude the possibility that
the system will maintain its boundaries more or less
continuously, through a hierarchy of norms and accommodation
or partial insulation of different subsystems, and that a
definite order and stable relations among the system's parts
will persist. But the possibility of conflict and potential
change is always present, rooted in the very process of
institutionalization, and the direction and occurrence of
change depend heavily on the nature of this process.
337. Just as the predilection for change is necessarily
built into any institutional system, so the direction and
scope of change are not random but depend, as we have shown
in discussing the processes of change in the Empires and in
the great religions, on the nature of the system generating
the change, on its values, norms and organizations, on the
various internal forces operating within it and on the
external forces to which it is especially sensitive because
of its systemic properties. These various forces naturally
differ between religious and political institutions and
among different societies, but sensitivity to these forces
and the tendency to change are inherent in all of them.
338. Administrative policies take on increasingly secular
tones, government agencies lose the legitimacy they once
enjoyed. Deprived of traditional support, yet more developed
than the other modernizing institutions, agencies do not
easily achieve synoptic relations with the masses of people.
In contrast to modern states, the decline of the class basis
of the bureaucracy reduces its prestige and therefore its
effectiveness to gain the respect of those adversely
affected by modernization and most in need of help to adjust
to a changed social order.
339. Two priorities of the revolutionary elites typically
affect their strategies. These have been implied in the
foregoing discussion, but now must be made explicit. First,
revolutionary elites seek to induce radical and rapid social
development with a principal, if not an exclusive, emphasis
on technological change; and, second, they desire to
maintain or strengthen their current positions of power
irrespective of the changes wrought in their societies.
# The first priority causes them to reject accommodation
with the pre-modern elites who usually oppose any
fundamental social changes in the direction of
modernization.
# The second leads them to obstruct the rising power of the
more technically trained successor sub-elites.
# The particular social groups and classes included in the
three elites may vary, but the significant general patterns
usually reflect the modes of competition among these three
types of elites.
340. Each elite places the cloak of nationalism around its
pronouncements and its image of the requirements for social
welfare and national unification. Technology constitutes an
important means for the revolutionary elite to maintain its
power and realize its dominant political goals. The
revolutionary elite also joins the successor sub-elite,
which it oversees and fosters, in assuming that the essence
of modernization is technological development. But, for the
successor sub-elites, technological advancement signifies
the broadening of social wealth and the increased
opportunities for acquiring power.
341. The competition between the revolutionary elites and
the successor sub-elites thus centers in that part of the
political system that controls the economy. Both of these
elite groups seek to diminish the residual power held by the
premodem elites. In virtually every case, socioeconomic
development constitutes a complex struggle for power.
342. When agriculture acquires a growth momentum, the
dynamics of that growth will induce farmers in these parts
of Asia to demand institutional adjustment. They will demand
a larger supply of credit, with stress on its timeliness and
terms, and they will organize cooperatives should these be
necessary for this purpose. They will demand more
flexibility in tenancy contracts. They will join with
neighbours to acquire tube wells and to undertake minor
investments to improve the supply of water. Both tenants and
landowners will also use whatever political influence they
have to induce the government to provide more and better
large-scale irrigation and drainage facilities.
343. Also using an agricultural illustration, a system or
network of institutions exists within a sector of an
economy. This network, with its component forward and
backward linkages, makes possible the developmental leverage
afforded institutions as strategic catalysts of the
development process.
344. At the start, in most less developed nations, little
attention was given to the development of a system of
services. Rather, almost total energy was devoted to the
development of a series of services, and only minimum
attention was given to the need for the development of a
functioning system with adequate linkages between the
various newly created institutions.
345. Those responsible for developing an institution to
provide a new service often have little understanding of
other services which are being introduced, and each group
tends to confine itself to its assigned task. Only recently
has research on institution building and agricultural
development revealed the importance of building a system of
services to support agricultural development.
346. Technical assistance and indigenous personnel alike are
often frustrated when the development of one institution
designed to remedy a constraint within an economy does
little more than provide an opportunity for another poorly
developed institution to substitute as the effective
constraint. Consequently, the layering of institutional
constraints often misleads individuals who feel the
elimination of one institutional barrier represents a
panacea for transforming traditional agriculture.
347. An empirical methodology for identifying networks of
linked institutions and the power positions of such
institutions within a system is provided by the experts
where they describe their approach to forming an
institutional sociogram as follows:
# Despite our recognition of the interdependency of
organizations, it is rare to find sociological research that
penetrates inter-organizational phenomena. Our primary
objective, therefore, was to develop a methodological
approach for use in the study of the inter-organizational
relationships of a society. We did so within a developmental
context.
348. A new institution in a developing country with an
explicit programme for selection, training and placement of
staff, will, in many instances, be a unique resource for
providing new cadres of leadership throughout the society.
349. An institution in takeoff need not conform exactly to
existing values. Since the conflict to which it is addressed
is new, the institution is bound to strain values in order
to encompass it at all. There are, however, psychological
limitations on the amount of strain a society can accept.
Even after a violent revolution the forms of new
institutions are influenced by the previous value framework.
However, after the institution has lived for awhile and come
to be accepted in the community, then values have changed,
and a new institution similar to it (according to the
institutional dimensions) can be created. Indeed, the new
institution can strain values further, and ultimately even
the pace of strain may be accelerated. When a society
becomes accustomed to having its values strained that is,
becomes change-oriented then the strain involved in change
may itself become a value.
350. While late modernizers experience advantages because of
the existence of external models, transfer of these models
creates strain. Transfer can never take place without some
distortion or change. Out of the complex of behaviours in a
transferred model, only a limited number can be selected by
the donors for emphasis. Similarly, out of the large number
of elements suggested by a model, not all will be understood
or accepted without change by the receiver. The
organizational reality, as it takes form in the modernizing
country, represents a version that is different from the
original model.
351. Another source of variation during transfer results
from the fact that institutions develop within a cultural
framework and reflect the preoccupations of that culture.
While a bureaucracy may be a bureaucracy, the manner in
which it works will be conditioned by the culture of the
bureaucrats. In transferring institutions, a process of
modification can be expected to take place as institutional
elements filter through the culture of the receivers.
Because the interrelationships between roles in transferred
institutions are required to develop rapidly, yet cannot do
so, considerable problems are experienced; roles are found
to articulate badly. New interrelations between the roles
are worked out in time but vary from the original model, and
strain is experienced until the new relationships are
institutionalized.
352. The educational institutions have not moved easily and
painlessly from their foundation in response to criticism
and challenge is true. But they moved, not uniformly, not at
the same time, and not with equal willingness. There was
progress in achieving balance between cultural and
functional objectives. The university as a place for
academic specialization, for an undirected pursuit of
knowledge and its unchallenged expression, sought increasing
room for a role and design directly and functionally related
to jobs, the process of production and the generation of
wealth.
353. The educational institutions have clearly begun to
accept an explicit and intentional, as opposed to an
implicit or incidental role in the immediate task of
national development. There is a more sincere effort to do
honour to the concept of relevance to an environment still
greatly lacking in literacy, science, a distribution of
modern skills, and habits that underlie productivity and
accept innovation. Such charges bring pressure on the
universities to modify the three forms of status to which
they so readily succeeded their position as an enclave
within the limited modern sector, the recruitment of a
student body increasingly favoured by socioeconomic forces,
and the emphasis only upon standard fields of learning
leading to the standard professions. Such effort measures
also the progress of the universities toward assuming shapes
and functions that are adequate and responsive to their own
time and their own place, without concern for invidious
comparisons or labels of secondariness.
354. Development affects the distribution of power in the
society and opens up new channels of access to positions of
power. The close relationship between development and the
struggle for power frequently causes the revolutionary
elites to impose ideological constraints on developmental
activities as part of their efforts to sustain their
position and contain divisive forces. These constraints tend
to narrow the outlooks of the revolutionary elites, causing
them to emphasize unanimity and conformity. This emphasis
conflicts with the motivations fostered among the youth with
respect to achievement and means- orientation.
355. Ideological formulations may thus exaggerate the
conflict and produce a generational split. Under some
conditions, the desire to maintain ideological purity may so
far outweigh that for rapid development that developmental
goals are replaced by regulatory goals. This has been a
typical way in which politically induced change has been
limited or diverted. In some cases, it has been the way in
which such change has been completely subverted or negated.
356. Successful completion of takeoff depends on two
requisites. In the first place, growth-sensitive groups must
gradually pervade society, either eliminating others or
winning them over. Thus, consensus on growth as a dominant
goal is achieved. In the second place, the groups must learn
that the sum of their immediate goals exceeds the nation's
capacity to accommodate them, but that no groups goals will
be achieved until all groups goals are partially met. It is
preferable to sacrifice one's immediate goals rather than
permit continued conflict to violate the dominant goal of
growth. Thus groups must agree on priorities. At this point,
society turns to the formation of a dominant set of
conflictresolving values on which to form consensus.
357. Institutionalized institutional change is brought about
by the innovative use of institutionalized power to resolve
social problems. Social problems occur as a consequence of
strain meaning a perceived inconsistency, or incongruence,
in institutional arrangements. Strain thus reflects either
the inadequacy of equilibrative mechanisms or emergent
dissatisfaction with equilibrium itself. In the context of
growth, strain is most likely to reflect the occurrence of
diminishing returns in one of its many possible forms.
358. Strain means that a state of affairs perceived by some
elements as unsatisfactory poverty, ignorance, racism,
corruption, for example has been institutionalized because
of the inability of equilibrative mechanisms to eliminate
the causes of the dissatisfaction. Hence institutional
change, innovation, is required to eliminate strain. But
innovation, unlike equilibration, is not and cannot be
subject completely to an institutionalized frame of
reference. By definition, standards to guide it and limits
to check it are both missing in greater or lesser degree.
The moral order, to be sure, provides certain standards for,
and sets certain limits on, the possibilities of pragmatic
innovation, and vice versa, but the applicability of the
standards and limits is seldom clear and precise. That is
one reason why innovation is never perfectly
institutionalized, never wholly predetermined. A more
important reason is that the processes of institutionalized
change operate on the initiative and at the direction of the
power structure or with its tacit approval.
359. Economic growth generates new conflicts, which
continuously call for new institutions. In a static model,
the choice of optimal institution-types depends entirely on
existing values. But institutions so chosen are likely to be
ineffective (apparent solution lines far below physical),
since the values to which they conform were not evolved with
the new conflicts in mind. Contestants will be vaguely aware
that a physical solution line lies somewhere out there, and
they will seek more effective institutions.
360. In seeking more effective institutions (an outward
shift of optimality as values change), power groups
ordinarily choose among many directions, for there is no
unique path to effectiveness. Normally they select those
institutions that yield the greatest marginal economic
growth per marginal unit of sacrifice (to the power groups
themselves as they push out on the dimensional continuum.
361. Successive institution formation leads to selection of
an ideology because each choice makes easier a subsequent
choice of the same kind of institution. To justify all
choices, a nation is led into an ideology. By direct
pursuit, on the other hand, power groups select an ideology
and form economic and political theories to support it.
Since it is difficult for a nation to form consensus on
ideology until it has had experience with other types of
consensus, and since popular nationalism is a relatively
low-cost object on which to form consensus and one that fits
in closely with ideology, takeoff countries usually expend
great sums on the promotion of nationalism. Some of these
sums represent resource sacrifices that physically retard
economic growth (as, for example, the rejection of foreign
investment). These sacrifices, which puzzle foreign
intellectuals of other ideologies, may nevertheless
constitute the least costly path to maximum net economic
growth.
362. Post-takeoff norms and institutions have a different
character from those of the pre-takeoff stage in that they
depend for their survival on continued growth. Once the
social system learns how to manage the conflicts of growth,
it discovers that it can manage them only if there is
continued growth. More and more, conflicts become
positive-sum games. The question is not one of who will win
and who will lose, but of how much each will win. More
effective institutions lead to efficiency in conflict
management, and more and more solutions become
Paretian-optimal (the point at which all positive-sum moves
are exhausted). Exile for the loser gives way to loyal
opposition.
363. What are the implications for individual institutions
as a consequence of the changes that occur during a nation's
takeoff? In so far as each institution represents a
component of a larger institutional system or network, it is
obvious that there will be some implications. Clearly, for
those institutions which employ as inputs some of the
outputs of other changed institutions in the network, this
development is one of the inevitable disequilibrating
forces. Similarly, changes demanded in the outputs of
traditional institutions as a consequence of changes that
have occurred in other using entities in the process of
modernization have implications for the output mix of the
traditional institution.
364. Two considerations are noteworthy in dealing with this
question. The first is that there is a decision to be made
with regard to the combination of outputs, i.e., the
production of one output may be competitive with the
production of another. The other point is that analytical
techniques are available for aiding in the determination of
the desired output mix.
365. Frequently, observers view institutions in traditional
societies critically due to the lack of progress in building
the institution as a force for development. All too often
these critics fail to recognize that except for very narrow
ranges of complementarity there is direct competition for
resources between the production of current services and
institutional reinvestment outputs. Tradeoffs must be made.
In traditional societies, where future output is discounted
very heavily, emphasis on the production of a large amount
of current services is entirely realistic. Frequently, some
exogenous force must be brought to bear on the system in
order to alter this output mix. These disturbances can range
from the availability of technical assistance teams to
natural disasters, e.g., drought.
366. In the private sector market-oriented firms
conceptually have relatively little difficulty in
determining their combination of outputs. However, in the
public sector institutions do not exchange their outputs in
price oriented markets. Nevertheless, an exchange is made
and the institution markets its products. The relevant
consideration at this point is not a set of prices (which
merely reflect the preferences of consumers for one good
relative to other alternative goods) but rather the
preferences of key decision makers in the society reflected
by their indifference curves formulated with regard to
alternative system outputs and the possible consequence of
shifting indifference curves on combinations of output. This
can result from exerting influence on key decision makers in
the larger society with regard to their preferences
concerning combinations of system outputs. Frequently, this
takes the form of providing new information to key decision
makers with regard to what is being done in similar
institutions elsewhere. Identification of key decision
makers and providing them with additional information may
represent a crucial initial element in an institution
building strategy.
367. Not only are changes in traditional institutions
triggered by changing output demands, but also by
modernizing elites within individual institutions who see
the institution as a potential means of influencing the
larger environment.
368. The genesis of institution building is in the minds of
a man or group of men. The beginning of the social change
process is always the same. It is either the response to a
distortion in the social system created by the uncoordinated
changes of its elements, or it begins with a vision of a
state of affairs preferred to the existing reality. In the
developing countries today engaged as they are in a process
of rapid transformation to catch up with the modern
industrialized parts of the world both situations can be
found in abundance. Modernizing elites, motivated by a sense
of urgency to improve the standard and quality of life in
their countries and by drawing on values, experience, and
technologies of the advanced countries, develop a vision of
the preferred state of their society or an aspect thereof.
Once these new values are accepted in the society or in
segments of the society, once new programmes of action and
new social and physical technologies have been implemented,
new conditions have been created which may result in further
changes.
369. The new or reconstituted organizations in which and
through which the innovative leadership embodies, fosters
and protects the new values, norms, and technologies, are
the vehicles of change. The institutions forged by the
agents of change are the instruments of innovation. Whereas
the origin of innovation is a reconfiguration of values,
objectives, and means taking place in the minds of the
change agents, the institutions which they create are the
operational expressions of this reconfiguration. In the
structure, process, and functions of the institution they
translate their ideas into reality. The immediate target of
the change agents, then, is the organization into which they
introduce their innovations.
370. By the activities and output of the organization the
innovators attempt to have an impact on the environment. The
organization becomes in this manner an instrument and an
extension of the individual or group of individuals who
constitute the innovative leadership. They create in the
organization a stable reference point, intended to represent
the values, action and behaviour patterns which become
normative in the environment.
371. The ultimate target system of the innovators is the
task environment. This task environment consists of those
organizations which enable an institution to carry out its
operations, those which are complementary to its operations,
and those which embody and protect values and norms relevant
to the operation of the institution. Only when a task
environment has been created which supports the values of
the institution, which is complementary to it, and when the
norms of the institution are shared by the task environment,
can an institution effectively carry out its functions and
services.
372. The three elements of our analysis, then, are :
# the change agents or leadership group which creates or
innovates the organization;
# the organization as the intermediate target system in
which and through which new values and technologies are
introduced; and
# the task environment as the ultimate target to which new
norms and values are spread to create a compatible and
complementary environment for the institution to perform its
functions and services.
373. These cases thus confirmed the salient character of the
leadership function, the prospects for success associated
with competent and committed leadership, and the costs
likely to be exacted by inept, uncommitted, and weak
leadership. Little guidance was being given on the tactics
available to innovators to compensate for inadequate
institutional leadership. Yet at the early stages of
institution building there appears to be no substitute, no
effective way of circumventing inadequate leadership, and
the likelihood is that the venture will stall, be reduced to
ineffectiveness, or even fail unless adequate leadership is
forthcoming.
374. Although the importance of leadership seems to be
agreed upon in many of the empirical studies, the importance
of the other institutional variables in the framework
formulated by Esman et al. seems to vary from institution to
institution.
375. It has been the function of doctrine to establish
normative linkages between the old and the new, between
establishment and innovators, such as would legitimize
innovations which came with the new organization. Doctrine
itself could not perform this function; yet it could provide
connections which made organizational innovations appear
less new, less threatening, and correspondingly more
legitimate. It could tip the balance. At the same time that
it might perform this function with those publics who would
ultimately either institutionalize or reject innovations, it
could also provide University leaders with norms or
standards which could guide them in projecting programmes,
establishing priorities, and assessing accomplishments. It
could provide a sense of solidarity and progress so
important to morale. These latter functions would be served
only to the extent that there was genuine commitment to the
doctrine by these leaders.
376. In this consideration of total institution building
doctrine three factors stand out. First, the major doctrinal
elements of the total institution were matters of firm faith
with the top leaders. There has been considerable agreement
between leaders of the institution and its most numerous
school-related publics as to what the major innovations of
the institution were. The students and graduates have not
only identified these doctrinal elements but in large part
identified with them. They had, in fact, internalized the
doctrine and were enthusiastic in viewing themselves as
examplars of the type of education which had been worked out
to realize this doctrine.
377. So much can be explained about the institutions
teaching management with terms of the confused, ill-defined
doctrinal goals that were assigned to it. The leadership and
the staff to this day have not succeeded in making them
operational to any significant extent. That is a point for
speculation. In this case, however:
# doctrine has been ambiguous;
# it has not been understood by the policymakers in the key
positions;
# none of them took the time or opportunity (perhaps even
had the capacity) to make it better understood;
# doctrine was never clearly related to any specific needs
of administration;
# it was never made clear how to identify such needs and
thus how doctrine might be adjusted to potential needs or
new doctrine evolved.
378. This is to say then that the importance of leadership
is a function of the scarcity of resources to achieve
collective objectives. To some extent, the two resources and
leadership are substitutable. Leadership involves the
skilful use of resources. The more plentiful they are, the
less important is leadership to achieving a given goal. A
corollary is that with a given amount of resources, the more
quickly a goal is to be achieved, the more important is the
contribution of leadership in formulating productive
strategies.
379. The scarcer are available resources and/or the shorter
the time in which ends are to be achieved, the more
important is the role of doctrine in Institution Building.
Doctrine can make the process more efficient and effective
by clearly specifying ends and presenting appropriate and
productive means. But when resources are scarce or time
short, then the more ambiguous are doctrine's ends or the
less reliable its means, the less it can contribute to
Institution Building.
380. Two organizational elements seem to stand out as
critical factors:
# the leadership style and political viability; and
# the manipulation of structure as a tactical element to
build up strong linkages with the environment.
381. Categories which have a certain analytic cleanness do
not necessarily reveal the same cleanness when applied as
schemes for organizing action. When the scholar becomes
educational leader, he is seldom concerned with doctrine per
se; he is concerned with the interpretation and
implementation of doctrine, and in his hands and in this
context the distinction between doctrine and programme loses
significance.
382. When this occurs, the search for a distinction is often
like trying to locate a shadow line: at times it seems neat
and clean, at other times blurred. Such a line has the
further unsettling characteristic of being constantly on the
move; what today is expressed purely as doctrine has
tomorrow been given programmatic interpretation, and
allegiance has spread from the slogan to the programme which
has been attached to it. Conversely, what has been
introduced on the action level finds need for
rationalization, and from this rationalization a new
increment is added to doctrine.
383. When operations have begun, a further difficulty
develops. On the one hand, doctrine without programmatic
interpretation has a hollow ring; one questions if it has
real content or meaning. On the other hand, once
programmatic interpretation has been worked out, this
interpretation begins to usurp the place of original
doctrine.
384. The most important functional linkages are with the
institution's customers. In an institution heavily dependent
upon markets, the enabling linkages tend to merge with the
functional linkages, but we shall here treat them as
conceptually separate. The mere fact that a market demand
has been identified is insufficient to guarantee that the
institution's services will in fact be sought. The normal
techniques of advertising and sales promotion are only a
partial answer to the marketing problem. The expression
functional linkage is an apt one, since it suggests that the
problem is one of identifying a mutuality between the
institution and its potential clientele, that they may serve
one another and become increasingly dependent on each other.
385. There has been an overwhelming sensitivity of the
institution's leadership, within the authoritarian social
structure, to insure support from higher status political
and bureaucratic sources. Any felt need to cultivate
functional linkages or to identify demands from elsewhere in
the environment, or to build linkages with prospective
clientele groups, were quite subordinate to the cultivation
and strengthening of enabling linkages. Indeed the
leadership, as long as it could sustain favourable enabling
linkages, had little inducement to build functional linkages
or supports in other groups in the society. Thus the problem
of managing its environment was not perceived as requiring
any real effort from the institutional leadership.
386. It was necessary to keep the institution out of
trouble, to avoid threatening any interest which might
create problems in its relationship with its enabling
linkages, and this it could do by offering a low key
programme which provided useful unthreatening services but
made little direct effort at establishing and manipulating
relationship within the environment that would make
innovational transfer a real possibility.
387. If successful institution building takes place,
functional linkages with other recipient institutions
provide a positive alternative to enabling linkages by
creating a pattern of legitimate interdependencies and
giving the organization a needed measure of autonomy.
388. As regards normative and diffuse linkages, the
recipient society seems to make more consistent efforts than
technical assistance. This was the case for mass media
support where the percentages were 30 and 40 respectively.
Also, consistent mass media support by the recipient
resulted in a somewhat higher percentage of successful
projects than did technical assistance encouragement
although both were high.
389. Again, one can tentatively conclude that when
considering those linkage relationships that come to
prominence at the end of the life cycle of the institution
building process, the recipient society effort is more
effective and vital when compared to technical assistance.
Probably technical assistance effort is needed in certain
situations, but the specifications of these situational
contexts is not possible given the quality of the data and
analytical tools now available.
390. There are some other tentative conclusions that are
worth mentioning. For instance, where consistent effort is
expended by either technical assistance or the recipient
society in building a favourable image for the organization,
the project always proved successful. One could hazard a
guess that this type of activity is not undertaken unless
many favourable indications of success for a project are
already evident and it is recognized that the creation of a
favourable image of the project in the recipient society
will further insure success. This linkage relationship
occurs at the end of the life cycle process. Hence, it is
possible that image building is a function of having
personnel and resources free because of the successful
conclusion of other activities related to the total
enterprise.
391. It is only when relevant publics, instrumental
accounting, and transactional accommodation cease to be
pivotal concerns of organization- institution leadership and
the pressure for survival ceases to be the preponderant
factor in decision-making that the essence of Esman's
approach to institution building becomes relevant as an
operational model. For it is then that one meaningfully
speaks of intrinsic valuation of the institution. If the
society is characterized by a low level of social
mobilization, intrinsic valuation is very much secondary to
transactional accommodations, instrumental accounting, and
utility maximization of relevant publics and clients in
general as an index of institutionality.
392. The first limitation, significant because of its
overall importance, relates to the rationale of the field of
institution building itself. It stems from the bias that
institutionalization is a positive process which is closely
related to societal innovation. No matter how intentional
this orientation may have been, it seems improper to equate
institution building entirely with innovation and positive
change. This restriction could, among other things draw
attention away from the dysfunctional aspects of the process
of institutionalization which have been the object of
attention in the literature of the social sciences in
general and in the modern organization theory, in
particular.
393. The second limitation is the tendency of the model to
view the process of institution building largely from the
perspective of the institution under study, and from the
omission of the role of individuals as linkages in the
process of organizational institutionalization. The former
view could lead to the impression that institutionalization
is a one sided process that depends entirely upon the
organization being institutionalized. While organizations
tend to devise ways of controlling their environment, total
environmental control is never within their power. The
process of institutionalization of an organization may be
enhanced by the decision of another organization with needs
for complementary services.
394. Individuals play other important roles as linkages in
the process of institutionalization at least in two
additional ways: namely, as prestigious personalities and as
carriers of institutional values. Organizations have been
following the policy of hiring retired persons for example,
for their Board of Directors. Universities do likewise for
their Board of Trustees, and often a president or a
chancellor may be chosen because of his prominence in the
community and his ability to raise funds when needed. The
presence of these outstanding individuals in a given
institution constitutes a very important element of
attraction of support from other social units.
395. The goal of institution builders is not simply social
change. Some change in social, economic and political
relationships is likely to occur over time with or without
their efforts. The aim of institution builders might better
be described as social control. By building institutions,
persons should be better able to control the course of
change and to accomplish certain desired changes within a
shorter period of time than would otherwise be possible.
Once established, institutions commonly permit persons to
control in some degree the demands for change which arise
over time. Thus, institutions may be seen as giving their
members some control over time itself. What social
scientists seeking to assist in institution building need to
formulate and verify are models of social change and social
control.
396. The institution-building model provides a helpful way
of looking at complex phenomena but thus far has
demonstrated limited relevance to policy makers because of
its limited predictive power (save in special circumstances
such as decisions regarding external aid). It is limited in
predictive power not so much because the model is faulty but
because we have not yet developed sufficiently sharp
analytical tools to find answers to what policy makers need
to know and to provide comparability in data between
different organizational entities. In short, the
institution-building model, at its present stage of
refinement, is more analytically elegant than relevant to
the real world of public policy in India.
397. Leadership delivers resources: Leadership promotes the
doctrine internally and externally. Leadership keeps the
internal structure functioning. Leadership mobilizes the
organization to accomplish the programme. Leadership
establishes and cements linkages with external groups.
Leadership is alert to opportunities to incorporate new
groups for support, output and acceptance.
398. Doctrine dramatizes the new idea, as well as innovation
and change. Doctrine helps to sell a programme and the
organization with it. Doctrine defines the goals. Doctrine
can generate support. Doctrine helps to define and limit
internal and external conflict. Doctrine absorbs ideas and
needs and combines them with the new ones to make the
organization acceptable in the society.
399. Programme provides impact in the environment: Programme
provides visibility. Programme provides vital contact with
the environment. Programme is the ultimate testing ground
for output. Programme promotes support by the environment of
the organization. Programme provides a specific focus for
change-oriented activities. Programme provides an identity
for clientele and staff and ultimately for the society.
400. Resource mobilization involves using old and new
sources: Resource mobilization involves a wide variety of
elements, money, people, technology, etc. Resources hold the
organization together until it can become accepted.
Resources provide internal strength and cohesion in the
organization. Resources contribute to autonomy.
401. Internal structure is a key to converting resources to
programme: Internal structure is a base for organization
mobilization. Internal structure is a device for
demonstrating innovative capacity. Internal structure
provides a means for resolving internal conflict. Internal
structure is a means for reflecting goals and doctrine.
402. Enabling linkages provide power to act: Enabling
linkages provide protection. Enabling linkages provide
initial resources. Enabling linkages support a new public
image.
403. Normative linkages show what values must be observed:
Normative linkages can provide support in making new ideas
fit present values. Normative linkages define relationships
with other organizations. Normative linkages can help
legitimize activities. Normative linkages provide the
framework for defining objectives in the national
institutional structure.
404. Functional linkages provide inputs the organization
needs to function: Functional linkages promote the use of
what the organization does. Functional linkages help define
programme boundaries. Functional linkages provide
opportunities for mutually beneficial support in the
environment. Functional linkages reinforce the effect on
organizational clientele.
405. Diffuse linkages broaden the base of support: Diffuse
linkages strengthen the public image of the organization.
Diffuse linkages provide alliances with other
change-oriented groups. Diffuse linkages promote an
understanding in the society of the goals of the
organization. Diffuse linkages help reinforce acceptance by
the society.
406. A Guide for Project Designers: The Institution Building
model has a limited value if it can only be used for ex post
analyses. Analysts and practitioners alike need an
analytical capability for preparing strategies for
institutional development and predicting the consequences of
these approaches.
407. An organization's Balance Sheet can be viewed as
consisting of elements of internal asset value and external
asset value. Important within the former is doctrine and its
closely related concept of staff morale. The latter is the
perception of an institution's clients, sponsors,
competitors, and others, relatively speaking, within their
value systems. Quantitative estimaters can be developed with
regard to image strength, connotation strength, and
endurance of purchasables by using prescribed techniques for
identification of these dimensions of an institution.
408. Efforts are being made to quantitatively and precisely
assess dimensions of institutions which will permit both
their more precise planning and more objective evaluation.
While the literature thus far has been impressive, it is far
from being exhaustive with regard to the potential that
exists. Historians may well record that these efforts made
in the revision and refinement stage of the institutional
building literature were only first attempts.
409. The Macro Perspectives: The role of institutions in
societies, in general, and in their development processes,
in particular, has not received the amount of attention in
the literature in the current revision and refinement phase
as have the more micro-oriented concerns. Nevertheless, some
significant insights have appeared with regard to how
institutional change within a market-oriented society
occurs. Prior to discussing these contributions, however,
the stage needs to be set with regard to the effect of the
orientation of donors and the early insights provided by
previous writers.
410. Working for the Poorest of the Poor: The NGOs in
different countries have been the most explicit in focusing
on those in the low end of the income distribution in
developing countries. This so-called New Direction has
significantly influenced the programming of the NGOs'
resources in the last decade.
411. This orientation of important members of the donor
community is relevant in that questions have been raised
concerning the role of institutions in donor efforts to
reach the poor. Unfortunately, because a level of education
and sophistication is required in order to develop and
direct institutions, some have contended that institutions
are elitist in nature and, hence, are irrelevant when
programmes are focused toward the poorest of the poor.
412. This contention begs the question of how any continuity
and indigenous self-sustaining capacity can be developed
within the host countries with regard to dealing with the
problems of the poor. Although it has been highly
unfortunate, this cleavage in the literature must be
recognized. What remains to be said emphatically is that the
development of both institutions and programmes to serve
those on the low end of the income distribution scale in
developing countries is not mutually exclusive. In fact,
institutions are indispensable as a means of permanently
moving the poorest of the poor to a higher income level if
something other than the conversion of the donor community
into a welfare community is to occur. The focus of donor
programmes on those at the low end of the income spectrum
has obvious implications for linkages, programmes, and
doctrine of the institutions that are needed in order to
generate the capability for dealing with these problems of
the times.
413. Induced Institutional Innovation: The changes in the
views in institutions is a consequence of shifts in the
demand for their services. More specifically he advances a
theory of institutional change in which shifts in demand for
institutional change are induced by changes both in the
relative price of factors and products and in the technology
associated with economic growth, and in which the shifts in
the supply of institutional change are induced by advances
in knowledge in the social sciences.
414. In applying the induced innovation approach to several
case studies, insight is obtained into significant changes
that occurred during the growth process. The increases in
rice yields and population pressures brought about changes
in the tenure institution. In particular, the increase in
rice yields was due to the expansion of the national
irrigation system and the introduction of high-yielding rice
varieties. Even though they were illegal under the land
reform code, the number of subtenancy arrangements increased
dramatically as a consequence of the pressures due to
increased rice yields and population growth.
415. The second induced institutional change that occurred
has been the emergence of a new pattern of labour-employer
relationships between farm operators and landless labourers.
In this instance because of the increased rice yields, for
the customary fraction of the crop which labourers
customarily received for harvesting rice, farmers demanded
that only those labourers who helped with the weeding
operation during the rice growing season had a right to
participate in the harvesting operation. Although not of an
organizational form, this institution did result in changes
as a consequence of the economic development that occurred
in the society.
416. The theory of institutional innovation in perspective:
The public choice literature has been concerned primarily
with proving institutional performance through the design of
more efficient institutions. It identifies changing resource
endowments, interpreted through changing relative factor
prices, as an important source directing both technical and
institutional change.
417. The final contribution in the macro area has been made
contending that the development of an institutional
infrastructure is equally, if not more, important than the
development of physical infrastructure in order for economic
development to occur in a given economic sector of a
developing country. Using agriculture as an illustration, he
contends that the institutional infrastructure is only as
strong as its weakest link. Hence, the productivity of any
given institution within that institutional infrastructure
is partially influenced by the relative productivities of
the other institutions in the infrastructure.
418. Two approaches appear to have dominated thinking about
rural institutions, and both are unfortunately fallacious.
The paternalistic approach assumes that rural people are
passive and fatalistic, uninterested in improving their
lives and incapable of initiative in making improvements.
Consequently, everything must be done for them (or to them)
in a top-down, bureaucratic manner. An opposing view is the
populistic approach which assumes that rural people are
vitally interested in change and completely capable of
transforming their communities if only the politicians and
bureaucrats would leave them alone. Both approaches derive
from unreal stereotypes of rural people, who are neither as
inert and ignorant as the first assumes, nor as virtuous and
wise as assumed in the second.
419. Participation: In understanding the performance of
local organizations, one key consideration is the
opportunity they offer members for participation in
decisions and programmes that affect their interests. We do
not mean participation in the ex post facto sense that some
economists use the term, to describe the distribution of
benefits from growth. Rather we refer to ex ante,
before-the-fact involvement in the choices and efforts
producing growth, which in fact has great influence on who
will benefit from the fruits of growth. Local participation
can bring useful, locally-based information and local
interests into decision processes, and it can reveal and tap
previously unrecognized managerial and leadership talents.
The opportunity to participate, even when it is taken up by
relatively few local people, enhances the legitimacy of
local institutions and also of national government, provides
a ready outlet for the expression of grievances, and can
generate local cooperative and self-help activities for
development.
420. Like all good things, participation can be overdone and
become unproductive for the welfare of most members of the
community. Local organizations can become overpoliticized,
immobilized by factionalism, with rural development
objectives displaced by struggles for local power and
control. Unfortunately, this extreme is often accepted
stereotypically as the likely consequence of participation,
especially by administrators who stand to benefit or at
least have their lives made simpler by deprecating and
eliminating any significant popular participation.
421. Because of the possible outcome of wayward
participation, there is utility in maintaining some central
power of inspection and enforcement of standards, already
mentioned above. There is an equally real danger, that
inspection and controls will be used to throttle
participation, as seen from the case study on panchayat raj
in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. The challenge for
central government is to encourage and tolerate, even
promote, a significant range of participation at various
levels of organization, without having it deflect effort
from the urgent needs of rural development.
422. The case studies reveal a considerable range of modes
of local participation. At one extreme, participation may be
manipulated by the central authorities and controlled within
narrow regime-determined parameters, while at the other
extreme, there can be freedom of farmers to determine how
much they as individuals want to participate in the
governance of local institutions and on what issues they
should attempt to make their voices heard. There can indeed
be much or little participation at either extreme, depending
on people's response to the pressure, on one hand, or the
opportunities, on the other.
423. Observers must guard against culture-bound
interpretations of participation which judge farmers meeting
for long hours in China or Korea simply as ritualistic or
coerced because it is government-sponsored and even ordered,
while regarding the same extent of participation in Sri
Lanka or Israel as real because it corresponds more to
Western ideas of democratic participation.
424. We think it is important whether or not rural people
can, by their own decisions, affect the course of government
activity, local and/or central, and we consider such
participation to be of great value to farmers and their
families. But we also recognize the function of less
empowered participation, where there can be considerable
communication, venting of grievances, solicitation of
suggestions, and winning of agreement on what is to be done.
425. Rural China today seems alive and even sometimes adrift
with participation, as often thousands of cadres from many
communities meet for days on end; put up in schools and
shops, using sleeping bags and open fires to sustain
themselves, while issues, directives and evaluations are
thrashed out.
426. In either case, the morale and enthusiasm of rural
people can be heightened by such opportunities, however
vicarious in substance and however effective or ineffective
in outcome, for involvement in efforts beyond their own
private sphere.
427. Our analysis of participation has shown an association,
though not a perfect one, between participation in rural
development. On the other hand, some success in rural
development, can be achieved without much popular
participation providing two conditions are met:
# there is an effective administrative system capable of
top-down action to influence rural areas, and
# the center has sufficient resources not to need local
contributions. Where administration is not so effective and
where local resources must be mobilized for rural
development, fairly extensive local participation becomes a
requirement for effecting and maintaining change.
428. The more successful cases had engaged much more
extensively in decentralization of operating decisions as
well as local-level planning. Decentralization is usually
more effective if it is controlled rather than complete. It
is not an all-or-nothing proposition, but rather a matter of
kinds and degrees. Decentralization is best seen and
implemented in terms of specific functions, depending on the
technologies involved and on the capacity of subordinate
levels of administration and organization to perform the
functions.
429. Two patterns of decentralization should be
distinguished :
# deconcentration of authority for decisions and action
within an administrative structure, and
# devolution, which involves transferring functions and the
resources to carry them out from agencies of the center to
lower-level organizations not administratively controlled by
the central government.
430. There has been stress and emphasis on institution
building and the new hypothesis towards a social
engineering, implied top down approach to institutional
development. The change in approach does not mean, however,
that the need for institutionalization will disappear.
431. On the contrary, such a change has profound
implications for modifying the use of the institution
building principles by those who build and implement
strategies for the development of institutions and for the
agencies that finance the development process.
432. Institution building practitioners have found that a
more participative approach impacts especially on :
# the rule makers at the center,
# linkage formation,
# leadership recruitment,
# doctrine, and
# strategy formulation.
433. On the whole, rural people are more capable and
responsive than the paternalistic model of social change
suggests, but less able to change their lives autonomously
than the populistic model presumes. There is a deep-rooted
contradiction in the paternalistic approach to rural
development, which expects that passive recipients will
become active cultivators and responsible citizens.
434. On the other hand, the populistic approach neglects the
common fact that entrenched local interests can dominate
organizations at the community level unless there are some
rules and even controls from higher levels. What should be
developed is an institutionalized system which is neither
just top-down nor bottom- up nor exclusively governmental.
435. The challenge for the rules makers at the center to
formulate directives that will delegate the proper authority
yet not enable local power brokers to dominate is a
formidable one. In many developing countries where the
distribution of wealth is highly skewed, clearly defined
rules of the game and continuous monitoring from the center
seem to be essential if the participative approach is to be
truly that.
436. Linkage formation and management is stressed in the
institution building literature. Indeed, some authorities
contend that it is the most important contribution found in
it. Some of the early writings infer that this should be
given high priority as soon as the organization is in place.
However, the more participative approach suggests reversing
the order of these two events. Work with key existing
institutions and their leaders in the environment should
precede formation of the organization even determine the
type of organization put in place, if a more participative
approach is followed. The implications for time required and
order of events in an institution building strategy are
substantial and will be discussed subsequently.
437. Leadership recruitment differs considerably under a
participative as compared to the traditional institution
building approach. Under the former, much of it could be
expected in the preorganizational phase. If leaders did not
emerge indigenously from the group, those recruited from the
outside would likely need to be approved by the organizing
group. Clearly, the emphasis on leadership in the literature
warrants the early leadership cadre being approved by the
organizing group, at minimum, and being selected by them, at
maximum.
438. The implications may be greater for doctrine than for
any other element in the institution building model. The
participative approach has doctrinal implications in and of
itself. The motivating function of doctrine should be strong
for the organizing group if they feel they largely own the
new institution from the outset.
439. Likewise, the clarity of purpose and singleness of
vision for an institution should be enhanced by a more
participative approach. Clearly, the opportunity to infuse
the new institution with value, i.e., institutionalize it,
should be expected to be greater for a participative
approach than for a top down orientation.
440. Strategy formulation and content for a new institution
under a participative approach will differ from the
traditional one. Used in the sense of a series of
predetermined, time-phased steps directed toward a specific
goal, strategy with regard to formation will differ in terms
of the actors who serve as its chief architects in the
participative as compared to the traditional institution
building approach. In the former, some of the chief
architects could be expected to come from the organizing
group. In the latter, these architects can be expected to be
at the center.
441. A change in the project designers will frequently
result in a change in the design as well. Even more, the
content of the strategy can be expected to be different. The
time for preorganizing an institution building project in
its environment will add considerably in most cases to the
time allocated up front for a project. Advocates of the
participative approach would be expected to justify this
additional time by maintaining that it increases the
probability of ultimately institutionalizing the effort.
442. Before turning to the implications for funding
agencies, two comments are in order. The first is that the
above discussion speaks to new organization situations
rather than revitalization of an existing institution. While
the implications for the latter are somewhat different, the
basic thrust of grounding an institution as solidly as
possible in its cliental groups in the environment is
equally applicable for all institutions, regardless of where
they are in their life cycles. The second is that the basic
need is for institutionalization of development-oriented
institutions. The difference is one of approach, not
ultimate objective.
443. Funding agencies, especially external donors, have a
limited number of alternative points of intervention
available to them. The institutions and government policies
offer the greatest potential for influencing the direction
of development. In many instances, government policies are
not accessible as points of intervention.
444. Hence institutions take on increased importance for
donors as well as being crucial to the host governments
development efforts. As a result, the potential to
overwhelm, from the top down, recipient host institutions is
very great.
445. There is a potential to be paternalistic in designing
institution building strategies to accomplish the donor's
objectives in as short a time as possible. Evidence in the
literature suggests this is a formula for failure if the
ultimate objective is a self-sustaining, auto-catalytic
institution, one that truly is infused with value by the
using society.
446. The role of a donor truly interested in fostering
institutions that will serve as engines of the development
process is a most challenging task. Hence, donors are well
advised to read carefully the literature of lessons learned,
especially in the last decade. Two of them are especially
worthy of attention.
447. First, the capital-assistance process format does not
fit institution building situations well. The rush to
obligate technical assistance funds results in, for example,
technical assistance personnel arriving on the scene with
counterpart personnel hardly knowing they are coming, much
less agreeing to the objectives some high-level
administrator in their institution agreed to.
448. How can the clientele groups, which the institution is
supposed to serve more effectively as a result of the
technical assistance, feel they have an ownership interest
in such a venture? Clearly, a shift to a more participative
approach, especially at the outset of a project, has merit
if the creation of truly viable institutions is the donor's
ultimate objective.
449. The second lesson learned is that institution building
is both an extremely complex and a time-consuming process.
The complexity of the process is indicated by scholars, some
of whom are in their third decade of studying institutional
building, who say much remains to be researched. In fact,
analysts are just learning to ask some of the right
questions in complex areas of the process.
450. The time-consuming nature of the process is evidenced
by the apparent success of the learning process approach,
which is likely to always require more time than the
traditional approach. But this is not surprising. Careful
reflection on what institutionalization is all about
infusing an organization with value suggests that there are
no quick, easy solutions.
Dr. Priya Ranjan Trivedi has adopted all the above mentioned
450 principles related to institution building practices
during all his professional career of 45 years. He has also
researched as to how and why an institution is created ?,
how it gets indisposed ?, how it gets stagnated ?, how it
gets murdered ?, how it dies of natural death, what are the
prescriptions for overcoming the stages of stagnation.
Dr. Priya Ranjan Trivedi is all out to transfer these
appropriate technologies of institution building to other
institutions, groups, individuals, governments,
universities, colleges, institutions, schools besides
national as well as international organisations
contemplating to strengthen the cause of institution
building in any country of the world..