When considering the social structure of larger societies and complex social formations, it is useful to use the concepts of institution.

• A social institution is persisting group with a manifest function in a society - a purpose or mission.
• It has a formal organization within it: i.e. roles and statuses - leader, chief, subordinates, generals, privates. Usually, institutions have a specialized workforce.
• An institution has formalized belief/value system - eg policies, practices, procedures; or maybe liturgy, ceremony, custom.
• Institutions generally have, along with a specific social function, specialized knowledge and specialized work necessary for fulfilling that social function.
• Institutions require social powers to exist and to continue.And institutions can be considered specific examples of social powers in themselves.

Organization and Formal Organizations

Agency, Bureaucracy, Charters, Corporations, Associations, Cohorts, Sodalities,

Characteristics of a Bureaucracy - Ideal type (see M. Weber)

1. Division of Labor - professionalism and trained incapacity
2. Hierarchy - leadership and subordination, Efficiency of CCC as well as Peter principle.
3. Written Rules - 'rule of the desk' not the person behind it. "The computer says...", Red-tape. No one is responsible - the desk is ('Bureau' is French word for 'desk, suffix '-cracy' is Greek for 'ruled by'.
4. Impersonality and Technical skills sets(slots, positions, replaceability of individual)
5. Tools ownership w organization (complex expensive tools possible, but don't use copier for your kid's homework assignment)
6. Spime under control of organization (location of personnel in space and time directed by organization)
7. Bureaucratic type of organizations are efficient means of accomplishing some kinds of social functions (think of space travel, or even air travel without NASA kind of organization, or the FAA for air travel). This type of organizing is very inefficient -maddeningly frustrating, oppressive sometimes- when used to accomplish some functions (compare FEMA - a bureaucracy, and the Coast Guard, a military-type organization in response to Katrina hurricane).

Dysfunctions of bureaucratic structures

-specialized expertise but trained incapacity, TAOR role limitations, 'not in my job description'
- red tape, huge accounting load
- the runaround - decision making paraylsis, the 'desk' rules, no one else does, 'the computer says...', '...for glubl a zihnnean, press #, to repeat press *'
- impersonality
- work bloat - work increases to fill the time that is alotted to do it, expenses increase to consume the budget allocated to the job
-humans diminish to 'human resources' , used as instrumentalities

Voluntary associations, NGOs, Non-profs,