In Associations & Institutions: Two Powerful Operating Systems for Social and Economic Change, Cormac Russell distinguishes between the ways associations and institutions work.
Associations draw on relationships, mutual care, and members' contributions. Institutions organise resources to provide goods and services consistently at scale. Russell argues that problems arise when institutions treat every difficulty as something a service must solve, overlooking what people can do together.
His proposal is for institutions to support associational life and for associations to discover, connect, and mobilise their own assets. For public-service practitioners, this raises a practical question: where does your organisation's support strengthen people's ability to act, and where does it make their activity dependent on your processes?