Institutional Cognition

No institution can perceive everything that matters to the world it governs. A ministry responsible for employment cannot know every individual working history, aspiration, informal arrangement, business decision and local…

Institutions have become extraordinarily good at finding patterns. Administrative databases can reveal where demand is rising, which groups experience poorer outcomes, when delays occur and which behaviours tend to appear…

Institutions receive information continuously. Reports arrive, indicators update, staff submit observations, citizens describe their experiences, evaluations produce findings and administrative systems record what has happened. Much of this information can…

Two people can look at the same evidence and reach different conclusions without either of them having ignored the evidence. Inside institutions, this happens constantly. A rise in expenditure can…

Institutions often speak about data as if its meaning were simply waiting to be extracted. A number appears in a dashboard, a trend emerges in an administrative series, a survey…

Institutions often respond to uncertainty in a predictable way: they ask for more information. When a decision feels weakly supported, another report is commissioned; when a problem remains unclear, additional…