Institutions are a strange mix of the mass and the individual. They abstract. They behave according to a set of rules that substitute both for individual judgements and for the emotional responses that occur whenever individuals interact. The act of creating an institution dehumanizes it, creates an arbirtrary barrier between individuals.
Yet institutions are human as well. They reflect the cumulative personalities of those within them, especially their leadership. They tend, unfortunately, to mirror less admirable human traits, developing and protecting self-interest and even ambition. Institutions almost never sacrifice. Since they live by rules, they lack spontaneity. They try to order chaos not in the way an artist or scientist does, through a defining vision that creates structure and discipline but by closing off and isolating themselves from that which does not fit. They become bereaucratic.
The best institutions avoid the worst aspects of bureaucracy in two ways. Some are not really institutions at