Mary Douglas, the british anthropologist, passed away last may. Her researches have greatly contributed to a better understanding of how institutions work.
In 1986, she wrote in her book : "How institutions think"
"Institutions fulfill the same tasks as theories." *
According to her, institutions, including business corporations of course, are made of the same representations as those that are produced by individuals. This observation helped her develop a deep understanding of institutional dynamics. As she said :
"Individuals tend to leave important decisions to their institutions and deal only with tactical matters and details." *
In other words, individual behavior is mostly instrumentalised by institutions. This approach naturally reminds us of what the french philosopher Gaston Bachelard said :
"Scientific instruments are materialised theories." *
The common point between institutions and scientific instruments is their capacity to materialise mental representations and give them an opportunity to become active, in the social world and in the physical one, respectively.
The german sociologist Max Weber had an intuition of this phenomenon, when he wrote in 1913* :
"Not a single average consumer has the least idea about the production techniques involved in the goods he uses everyday. The same can be said about social institutions." *
This reality is still too often ignored in contemporary management practices. As they act, leaders tend to forget how their decisions are highjacked by the institutional processes that keep repeating themselves. They prefer to believe that the gap between their intentions and the results stem from imperfect collective execution. This is how the concept of Human resources is meant to conceal what actually is the corporate unconscious .
* My translation from french
Comments