A centuries-long history of theory and research shows that every authority system tries to cultivate a belief in its legitimacy. This paper focuses on the legitimation of regimes – social relationships and the rules that govern them. We use existing theory and research to identify a basic...

Basic science, sometimes called “curiosity-driven research” at the National Science Foundation and other places, starts with a question that somehow stays in the mind, nagging for an answer. Such questions really are “puzzles”; they arise in an intellectual field or context, asking...

We present a specific mathematical model for predicting allocative behaviors in the context of reward expectations theory. We test the goodness of fit of the model to data from two empirical studies and demonstrate that it fits quite well. We also suggest alternative research uses for the model.

In this study negotiated exchange under the 1-exchange rule is considered in the whole population of 142,660 exchange networks up to size 9. A review shows that 51 of these networks have been studied in the literature. Predictions for the whole population of networks are derived by parsimonious...

While classical exchange theorists excluded bargaining from the scope of their theories, most contemporary theorists have done the opposite, concentrating exclusively on negotiated exchanges with binding agreements. This chapter describes the theoretical logic and empirical results of a new...

Last year we began a new trend in the Advances in Group Processes series. Our goal was to publish a set of five interrelated volumes that examine core issues or fundamental themes in the group processes arena. Each volume was to be organized around a particular problem, substantive area, or...

In this paper, I show how a consideration of legitimacy processes is of theoretical use in addressing two current issues in status research. First, I investigate under what conditions the contrast between the sex composition of a work group and the sex composition of an organization’s...

According to status construction theory, a social attribute becomes imbued with status value through its association with valued resources. Yet, explanations for such associations have received scant attention. I propose that social identity processes may lead agents controlling resources to...