On Thinking Institutionally

Book excerpt: The twenty-first-century mind deeply distrusts the authority of institutions. It has taken several centuries for advocates of critical thinking to convince western culture that to be rational, liberated, authentic, and modern means to be anti-institutional. In this mold-breaking book, Hugh Heclo moves beyond the abstract academic realm of thinking about institutions to the more personal significance and larger social meaning of what it is to think institutionally. His account ranges from Michael Jordan's respect for the game of basketball to Greek philosophy, from twenty-first-century corporate and political scandals to Christian theology and the concept of office and professionalism. Think what you will about one institution or another, but after Heclo, no reader will be left in doubt about why it matters to think institutionally.