ABSTRACT
An institution involves a group of people with a set of common or similar behavior patterns. Institutions should not be conceived of as buildings, or even as groups of people without regard to the influences that link them. The essence of the institution is the behavior pattern (of institutionalized behavior norms) that is observed by the group and that may be the product of long years or even centuries of evolution. New features of the institution’s behavior patterns probably came into use at some earlier time because of influences then prevailing, and those then new behavior patterns were probably more or less appropriate responses to those influences. The limited liability of stockholders in corporations and group solidarity in labor unions are examples of institutionalized behavior norms appropriate to the conditions at the time they came into being. 1
