Institutional Architecture

Geoff Mulgan has appeared fairly frequently on this blog – as you can see from the posts listed at the end. The reason is simple – whether writing about Capitalism, Artificial Intelligence, State power or public Strategy, his books are all extremely thoughtful and comprehesive. He recently submitted this brief note to Parliament on strategic thinking in government and, in anticipation of a Labour government, wrote in May this short memo about the task of designing new public institutions

The UK has a great history of creating public institutions – from the Post Office and BBC to the NHS, the Metropolitan Board of Works to the British Library, the Arts Council and the Open University. Some were very much part of government, while others were designed to serve the public interest while remaining independent. Some became part of the furniture of everyday life, while others soon disappeared. 

Winston Churchill famously commented that we shape our buildings, but they then shape us. The same is true of institutional architecture – we shape our schools, courts, hospitals, regulators and parliaments, but they then shape not just what we do, but also how we think.

Institutions exist because distinct tasks - running libraries, hospitals, armies, supporting science or providing welfare services – require a distinct ethos, methods and capabilities rather than generic bureaucracies. It follows that new tasks will often require new institutions too – and as I show there is a lot of activity globally around tasks ranging from the governance of AI to decarbonisation and mental health.

Perhaps surprisingly, however, there are no centres of expertise in institutional architecture, either in the UK or globally, and political parties, and governments tend to default setting up committees or commissioning consultancies to help with design, which often leads to a recycling of traditional models rather than fresh thinking about what might work best.

Things look very different in the world of business, which is served by hundreds of centres interested in organisational innovation and feverish debate about new forms. These have contributed to dramatic change in how organisations are structured, including vast global businesses centred around search engines (Google), algorithms (TikTok) and platforms (Amazon, Alibaba). A generation ago, few imagined that the world’s biggest taxi companies (Uber and Didi) would own no taxis or that the world’s biggest provider of accommodation (Airbnb) would own no hotels. By contrast, there has been relatively little creativity in the public sector where thinking about institutional design has not advanced much in recent decades.

Some of the institutions which have survived longest combined a strong moral ethos and sense of mission along with competence and excellence. Some – notably BBC and NHS - had a direct relationship with the public, including very regular direct communication. Others were more technocratic but won over key stakeholders and experts (The National Instotitute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) is a good example) or were lucky with their enemies (such as the OBR which was greatly strengthened by its brief interactions with the Truss Premiership). A tentative conclusion might be that some mix of moral purpose and mission, perceived competence and strong relationships is key to survival.

A Mulgan Resource
The Art of Public Strategy – mobilising power and knowledge for the public good Geoff 

Mulgan (2009)
The Open Book of Social Innovation ed G Mulgan et al (2012)

Other posts about Geoff Mulgan’s work

https://nomadron.blogspot.com/2024/04/the-state-and-democracy.html 
https://nomadron.blogspot.com/2024/03/can-governments-think-strategically.html 
https://nomadron.blogspot.com/2023/07/collective-intelligence-part-ii.html 
https://nomadron.blogspot.com/2023/07/have-we-lost-our-collective-intelligence.html 
https://nomadron.blogspot.com/2023/01/strategy-whats-in-name.html 
https://nomadron.blogspot.com/2022/12/have-we-become-too-fixated-on.html 
https://nomadron.blogspot.com/2022/12/another-world-is-possible.html