Internal leadership shapes judgement and processes
Any institution needs a framework of reference to grow. Institutions have their own typologies, like anything else. Institutional typologies can be classified according to their size—large, medium, and small. They can be institutional types by their form of ownership.
They can be proprietary, partnerships, or limited to certain types of people. They can be constituted by people who have invested money in them, and the list can go on.
Besides the types of categories listed in the preceding paragraphs, there can be other types of institutions. The purpose of this text is not to focus on the types of institutions that exist or can exist. The purpose is to highlight how the institutions work. Conventionally this role is performed by a statutory body or a federating body, which decides the method of work. A statutory body determining how institutions work would have a legal status duly enshrined by the process of approval of the statutory body itself, in a legislative system. This legislative system can be an Assembly or a Parliament. Somewhere, a legal framework would come in. The important thing is to understand how it would all work. It is a method of work which will ultimately decide the probity, or indeed, the effectiveness, of the system.
There is a moral dimension also, because in the ultimate analysis, unless it is a private single proprietary ownership, every contributing stream of people who provide money and resources to the organization has a right to know how the institution they have provided money to, is functioning. There is a need to think about corrective measures. There is also a need to ensure that a basic commonsensical fair play is at the root of the institution. It is the system of monitoring which is at the core of organizational and institutional effectiveness. It is here where empirical data on orderly and deviant institutions becomes necessary.So far, it has been the responsibility of the consensus of the social segment where this institution is embedded to determine this. Thus, it is that the general public opinion becomes determinant of ultimate efficacy of the functioning of the institutions. In this the media plays an important role, because it has the responsibility of spreading facts and contributing to a healthy and fair opinion system. Internal leadership of the institution plays a crucial role, because between a flagrant violation of institutional probity and a very rigid form of framework of the institution lies the space for judgment and processes.When it comes to process, there are several indicators of assessing how well or not so well the institution is working. These process issues can be listed, enumerated, and explained. There can be several of them, including size of the institutional bodies, the focus of their sub-objective within the overall objective; how the central figure in that unit is identified, and the list can go on. For purposes of illustration, one could just focus on defining the objectives of the sub-body or indeed, the number of times it meets.
To begin at the top, just the number of times the board of an organization meets is a good example. In streams of organization, say, in education where the statutory systems are not equally rigorously articulated aberration can take place. There have been cases of several educational institutions where the Governing Body neither meets regularly nor for a given span of time. There have been examples in national chains where a newly set up institution in that chain did not meet for as much as nine months. It did not bother anyone particularly. To put it more simply, for the healthy running of institutions, there is a need to establish, observable, actionable, and cognizable method of work.
(The writer is a well-known management consultant of international repute. The views expressed are personal.)
