Institutions also have an important redistributive role to play in the economy – they make sure that resources are properly allocated, and ensure that the poor or those with fewer economic resources are protected. They also encourage trust by providing policing and justice systems which adhere to a common set of laws.

Functionalism. The functionalist perspective attempts to explain social institutions as collective means to meet individual and social needs. It is sometimes called structural-functionalism because it often focuses on the ways social structures (e.g., social institutions) meet social needs.

For functionalists, the family creates well-integrated members of society and instills culture into the new members of society. It provides important ascribed statuses such as social class and ethnicity to new members. It is responsible for social replacement by reproducing new members, to replace its dying members.

Thus, institutionalization is important for organizational development, because it considers the processes of learning and changing institutional models from an evolutionary and deterministic point of view, which influences the movements of change and deals with the level of uncertainty inherent in the innovative …

Historical institutionalism, a social science method of inquiry that uses institutions as subject of study in order to find, measure and trace patterns and sequences of social, political, economic behavior and change across time and space.

There is a strong French tradition of constitutionalism. It is a species of the “old institutionalism” in that it is descriptive, normative, and legalistic. It focuses on the formal-legal aspects of institutions, but not on case law. It is another example of staatswissenschaft.

New institutionalism or neo-institutionalism is an approach to the study of institutions that focuses on the constraining and enabling effects of formal and informal rules on the behavior of individuals and groups. New institutionalism originated in work by sociologist John Meyer published in 1977.

Critical institutionalism is a contemporary body of thought that explores how institutions mediate relationships between people, natural resources and society.

Institutional bricolage is a post-institutional approach explaining the interaction between actors and institutions focusing on the dynamics of institutional arrangements surrounding natural resource management. Through time institutions change in response to the external environment and internal views (Cleaver, 2002).