Peter M. Blau

This book originated in an analysis of government bureaucracies. Peter Blau was led to wonder whether corresponding patterns are observable in the administrative structures of other types of organisations. This text examines the institutions of higher education, which Blau believes are the formal organisations that differ most in objectives and performance from government bureaucracies.

In his landmark study of exchange and power in social life, Peter M. Blau contributes to an understanding of social structure by analyzing the social processes that govern the relations between individuals and groups. The basic question that Blau considers is: How does social life become organized into increasingly complex structures of associations among humans. This analysis, first published in 1964, represents a pioneering contribution to the sociological literature. Blau uses concepts of exchange, reciprocity, imbalance, and power to examine social life and to derive the more complex processes in social structure from the simpler ones. The principles of reciprocity and imbalance are used to derive such processes as power, changes in group structure; and the two major forces that govern the dynamics of complex social structures: the legitimization of organizing authority of increasing scope and the emergence of oppositions along different lines producing conflict and change.

This book originated in an analysis of government bureaucracies. Peter Blau was led to wonder whether corresponding patterns are observable in the administrative structures of other types of organisations. This text examines the institutions of higher education, which Blau believes are the formal organisations that differ most in objectives and performance from government bureaucracies.

In his landmark study of exchange and power in social life, Peter M. Blau contributes to an understanding of social structure by analyzing the social processes that govern the relations between individuals and groups. The basic question that Blau considers is: How does social life become organized into increasingly complex structures of associations among humans. This analysis, first published in 1964, represents a pioneering contribution to the sociological literature. Blau uses concepts of exchange, reciprocity, imbalance, and power to examine social life and to derive the more complex processes in social structure from the simpler ones. The principles of reciprocity and imbalance are used to derive such processes as power, changes in group structure; and the two major forces that govern the dynamics of complex social structures: the legitimization of organizing authority of increasing scope and the emergence of oppositions along different lines producing conflict and change.

Peter M. Blau and Otis Dudley Duncan pen a classic source of empirical information on the patterns of occupational achievement in American society. Based on an unusually comprehensive set of data, The American Occupational Structure is renowned for its pioneering methods of statistical analysis, as well as its far-reaching conclusions about social stratification and occupation mobility in the United States. Presenting “sociology at its scientific best” (Fortune), The American Occupation Structure received the Sorokin Award of the American Sociological Association in recognition of its significant contribution to the social sciences.

Upon its publication in 1962, this book became one of the founding texts of organizational sociology. Bringing together diverse approaches, it presented a new focus of interest: the formal organization. Blau and Scott raised the level of analysis from attention solely on individual participants and work groups to a broader understanding of organizations as collective actors. In the book, the authors reviewed multiple types of studies—including case studies, experimental research, and surveys—and integrated them to define new central themes. They used their own empirical studies of two social welfare agencies to illustrate the ways in which varying organizational contexts shape work group and participant attitudes and activities. Formal Organizations served to integrate research on both formal and informal systems, authority and leadership, and stressed the importance of links to the wider environment. This reissue, which includes a new introduction by Scott, makes this seminal work accessible to a new generation of scholars and practitioners.