Institutions develop their own moral logic — distinct from, and sometimes in sharp conflict with, the individual ethics of the people within them. The bureaucratic imperative to protect the institution, the normalization of small compromises that accumulate into large corruptions, the diffusion of responsibility that allows each individual to feel uninvolved in collective harm — these are structural features, not simply failures of individual character. The examined institutional life asks what structures, cultures, and accountability mechanisms are needed to make organizations capable of behaving with the integrity that their individual members may separately intend.
Each step builds on the last.