Social Institution

                          The sociological concept of institution is different from the common usage. An institution is not building; it is not a group of people; it is not an organization. Horton and Hunt defines institution as, “an institution is a system of norms to achieve some goal or activity that people feel is important, or, more formally, an organized cluster of folkways and mores centered on a major human activity”. More specifically speaking, institutions are structured processes through which people carry out their activities.

            

            Institutions do not have members, they have followers. For example, a religion is not a group of people; it is a system of ideas, beliefs, practices and relationships. In this context, a church is an association of people who accept the beliefs and follow the practices of particular religion. In a very much broader way, Horton and Hunt explain institution as, “an organized system of social relation relationship which embodies certain common values and procedure and meets certain basic needs of the society.” Here, ‘common values’ refers to shared ideas and goals, the ‘common procedures’ are the standardized behavior patterns followed, and the ‘system of relationships’ is the network of roles and statuses through which people carry out this behavior.

           

           Five important basic institutions in complex societies are: familial, religious, governmental, economic, and educational. In modern societies, the values and procedures are so highly standardized behavior which is called ‘scientific institutions’. 

       

           Important of Institutions:

            Social institutions are such that they help create and develop common values which the people must conform to. This conformity avoids the possible conflict among the group of the people living at the particular society and such that the institutionalization process in the modern society with modern organization system is very much obvious with division of labor more specific. Bureaucratic system, business organizations, and commercial banks are attributed with institutionalization process.