Institutional Cognition

There is a familiar complaint about large institutions: nobody seems to understand how the whole thing works. Ask one department about a problem and it refers you to another. Speak…

Public institutions have become very good at acquiring things that promise to make them smarter. They build databases, commission analytical platforms, recruit specialists, purchase decision-support systems and, increasingly, experiment with…

Imagine asking a large public institution a relatively simple question: why does a particular process work the way it does? One person may know the legal history behind it. Another…

We talk about institutions as if they were things we could point to. A ministry occupies a building. A university has campuses. A hospital has wards, employees and equipment. A…