THE MODERN ECONOMY

'...the modern market economy does not mature into forms of settled relationships. On the contrary, it is a dynamic force demanding ever greater adaptability and complexity in people's lives. On the consumption side, it is in the system's self-interest to create appetities that can never be satisfied and always stand poised to switch to the next big thing. On the production side, the same self-interest demands that economic organizations show little real loyalty to the people who are working for them. In the mdoern firm's striving for operational efficiency and effectiveness, everyone and everything must be ultimately disposable. Because of their higher salaries, retirement benefits, and health costs, employess with a long-term commitment to the organization can appear as little more than a financial drain on the bottom line. Not surprisingly, today's workers have realized that to survive, they must reciprocate with the same lack of institutional loyalty.' 

Hugh Heclo, On Thinking Institutionally, p.167. 

SUBMITTING TO THE PAST

'To be willing to submit to what has been received is a distinctly unfashionable idea in contemporary society. That is why the canon of Western literary classics has aroused such controversy in modern academia. It is why in all the arts, modern critics have had a field day cutting the masters down to size and declaring "genius" to be merely a socially constructed category. Scratch below the surface and you will see that the difficulty is not really that the allegedly "great" works were created by European white males. If Shakespeare was someday discovered to be  black woman, the problem with honoring the excellence of the classics would still be the same. It would be the problem of submitting to the authority of Shakespeare and his, or her, brilliance.' 

Hugh Heclo, On Thinking Institutionally, p. 100. 

SCIENCE

'To think scientifically is to trust whole-heartedly that the presumed order of the natural world is accessible to man's scientific investigation - that any truths about the nature of things expressed in empirical data can actually be grasped by the powers of the human mind. The social institution of science, with its framework of moral agency and purpose, shows that among the most incomprehensible things about the universe is the fact that there is a creature in it that should imagine it is comprehensible.' 

Hugh Heclo, On Thinking Institutionally, p.88. 

THE IMPORTANCE OF INSTITUTIONS

'To live in a culture that turns its back on institutions is equivalent to trying to live in a physical body without its skeleton or hoping to use a language but not its grammar. A culture wholly commited to distrusting its institutions is a self-contradiction.' 

Hugh Heclo, On Thinking Insitutionally. p.38.