Definition of "instrumentally"

They will argue that the end being essentially beneficial, the means become instrumentally so.

1760–1765, Edmund Burke, Tracts Relative to the Laws against Popery in Ireland

Institutionally based, restrictive relationships, such as those among family members or professional colleagues, must thus be contrasted with instrumentally based, nonrestrictive relationships serving the aims of practical pursuits, such as those between freely practicing experts and their clients or between sellers and buyers. In instrumentally structured situations it is not necessary for the participants to curb their needs, because the mere expression of needs in no way compels others to gratify them, as it tends to do in the family.

1974, Thomas S. Szasz, chapter 8, in The Myth of Mental Illness, page 144