The Benedictines are the oldest and most influential form of Western monasticism, and the most common misunderstanding of them is to picture a centralised order at all.
Stability, and the autonomous house
A Benedictine makes a vow of stability to a single house, not to an order, and the abbot is elected by that community; there is no general who commands the whole. The Benedictines are a confederation of autonomous abbeys and congregations rather than a unified body, which is why a monk joins a monastery and belongs to it for life. The rhythm of the day is the Opus Dei, the round of communal prayer, balanced with manual and intellectual labour under the motto ora et labora.
The rule that generated reforms
The Rule of Benedict, composed at Monte Cassino around 529, is a document of remarkable moderation, and its durability lies in that moderation. Later movements that sought a stricter observance, Cluny, the Camaldolese, the Cistercians, the Trappists, all defined themselves as reforms of the same rule rather than as breaks with it, so the whole family tree of Western monasticism grows from one sixth-century text. That the reforms recur is itself evidence of how a moderate rule invites periodic returns to severity.