Institutional Cognition

Governments are expected to make decisions about societies they can never observe completely from inside their own organisations. They collect administrative data, commission research, employ specialists, maintain statistical systems and…

When institutions try to improve how a group thinks, they often begin with the people. They recruit different expertise, provide training, change leadership, add analytical capacity or bring new participants…

When an institution wants greater consistency, control or strategic coherence, centralising decisions can seem like an obvious solution. Authority that was previously dispersed across local offices, departments or professional units…

Large institutions have good reasons to standardise. Common definitions make information easier to compare, shared formats allow systems to exchange data, common procedures reduce uncertainty about how work should be…

Institutions often describe integration as though it were primarily an organisational achievement. Teams are brought together, databases are connected, responsibilities are coordinated and information is placed within common systems. These…

Large institutions rarely suffer from a complete absence of knowledge. More often, they possess many kinds of knowledge that have difficulty working together. Specialists understand different parts of the problem,…