Negotiated Order

Negotiated order is a theoretical perspective developed primarily by Anselm Strauss (1917–1996), who argued that virtually all social order is negotiated order. To accomplish tasks in social settings, people chiefly negotiate with each other. Through ongoing processes of negotiation, social actors alternately create, maintain, transform, and are constrained by, social structures. The negotiated-order perspective provides a means to understand the processes involved in both structural change and stability and to identify the social structures and conditions that shape those processes. It also permits researchers to address one of the central concerns in sociology—the link between individuals and society—by specifying how social actors respond to and changed social structure, whether they act on their own behalf or as organizational representatives.

The negotiated-order perspective enables researchers to examine ...