Some problems are too big and too permanent for any one person to solve twice. Societies answer them by building institutions — standing arrangements of norms, statuses, and organizations that outlive everyone who passes through them. Tap each one to see the need it answers and the work it actually does.
Eight institutions, one society
Tap an institution to open it.
Social institutionschoose a mode to begin
Tap an institution — tap it again to return to the wheel
Now read it through one paradigm
Consequence 1 of 9
What kind of consequence is this?
Keeping the levels straight
An institution is a pattern, not a place.
A social institution is an enduring cluster of norms, statuses, roles, and organizations that a society develops around a persistent need. Keep three levels apart: the family is an institution, the household down the street is a group, and a school district is an organization within the institution of education. Institutions outlast every person who passes through them — which is exactly what makes them social facts in Émile Durkheim’s sense: external to the individual, and exerting constraint on them.
Three cautions before you use this. First, Robert K. Merton’s two axes are separate: recognized vs unrecognized, and helps vs harms. A dysfunction can be perfectly visible or entirely unnoticed — so "latent" is not a polite word for "bad."
Second, always ask functional for whom? Merton insisted that a consequence beneficial to one group may be damaging to another, which is the precise point where functionalism and conflict theory meet rather than merely disagree.
Third, resist the functionalist fallacy: that an institution exists does not prove it is necessary, efficient, or good. Merton’s own repair was functional alternatives — the need may be perfectly real while the current arrangement is only one of several ways of meeting it.