commitments that express one’s enduring loyalty to some group or process.
However, institutional thinking requires us to go a good deal farther down
this path.
That becomes clear if we ask where the infusion of value is coming from. If it is
simply the individual actor at work, then we are implicitly relegating institutions
to objects of psychological purchase that people choose to make based on some
sort of pleasure/pain criteria. For example, the devout baseball fan may infuse the
game with value, ‘‘getting a kick out of it’’ over and beyond any particular game his
team is playing. Yet, it is also clear that the fanatical team fan may have little interest
in and may actually behave in ways harmful to baseball as an institution. In other
words, institutional thinking is about value diVusion as well as infusion. Institu-
tions diVuse values beyond the personal preferences for the task at hand. They
make claims on one’s thinking to acknowledge, and then through choices and
conduct to realize, a normative order.
Institutions embody what Charles Taylor has termed ‘‘strong evaluations.’’ As he
puts it, these ‘‘involve discriminations of right or wrong, better or worse, higher or
lower, which are not rendered valid by our own desires, inclinations or choices, but
rather stand independent of these and oVer standards by which they can be judged’’
(Taylor 1989 , 4 ). These intrinsic (rather than extrinsic) values imply relations of
obligation, not convenience. They demand that primary attention be given what is
appropriate rather than what is expedient. From inside the institutional world-
view one not only thinks about but is moved by a central fact—that there is
something estimable that is larger than yourself and your immediate interests. In
approaching a situation the question is not, how can I get what I want? It is the
more duty-laden question of, what expectations and conduct are appropriate to
my position? Of what am I to be an example?
A prominent example in modern times has been the development of professions
and formal professional standards. To invoke claims of professionalism is to appeal
to standards for guiding and judging conduct that lie beyond our individual
preferences. In recent years many people have tended think of a profession as a
group monopolizing a body of knowledge or practicing specialized techniques.
However, if this is all a profession means, it lacks the institutional quality we are
discussing here. The institutional thinking embodied in any true profession is
the remnant of much older ideas having to do with ‘‘oYce’’ and ‘‘vocation.’’ It
is the attitude of responding to a call from beyond yourself. More than simply
acquiring a body of knowledge or techniques, one enters into a professional lore
such that applying this or that techniqueWts into a normative scheme of things.
Of course, it is common these days to hear complaints about the behavior of
lawyers, doctors, teachers, and others. However, even the most cynical lawyer or
doctor jokes are, in a backhanded way, aYrming strong evaluations that should be
guiding the delinquent practitioners of modern professions. Likewise, when one
hears complaints about higher education or a news organization losing its soul to
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