Final answer:
Social control is the concept that refers to the various institutions, norms, and ideologies that maintain societal norms and regulate conflicts. It is exerted by large organizations that influence social behavior and maintain social order through laws, morals, values, and cultural rules.
Step-by-step explanation:
The concept referred to in this question is social control, which encompasses various elements in a society that contribute to maintaining norms and regulating conflicts. Social control is exerted by large-scale institutions such as governments, religions, and transnational corporations. These institutions play an influential role in guiding the behavior of individuals within a society by setting and enforcing rules, moral standards, and cultural norms. Furthermore, the ideologies they promote, like democracy, shape the functioning of different social realms by defining entities, roles, behaviors, and processes within those realms.
For instance, during the conservation initiatives, multiple political systems on different scales may need to employ such controls to ensure policy reinforcement. Political institutions and the laws they create contribute significantly to the ecology of social control by formalizing the expectations of social behavior and thus maintaining order and stability.
As part of the dynamic equilibrium, a society's health is reflected in the seamless functioning of its components, including these normative institutions. Any changes or challenges to the norms, such as those brought about by the counterculture movements of the 1960s, demand an adaptation of the existing social constructs and control mechanisms.