Lawler, Edward

Edward J. Lawler, born in 1943, is an American theorist and experimental sociologist. He links properties of social structure to individual perceptions, emotions, and attributions to explain a range of social phenomena. Working primarily within the social exchange tradition of sociology, he has developed numerous theories that relate social structure to bargaining, voluntarism, commitment, emotion, and micro social order. He has authored several books, including Power and Politics in Organizations (1980) and Bargaining: Power, Tactics and Outcomes (1981) (both with Samuel B. Bacharach). He is the founding editor of Advances in Group Processes, the 2002 winner of the Cooley-Mead Award for lifetime achievement, and most recently the Martin P. Catherwood Professor at Cornell University. Lawler is currently the Dean of the School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell.

Lawler adopts a holistic approach to understand links between social structure and human behavior. Ontologically, he begins with the notion that structures of power, dependence, and opportunity exist at the macrolevel and these are “real” in the sense they shape opportunities and constraints for individuals. Structures guide, but do not entirely determine, the course of social interaction. Undergirding this structural orientation is the interactionist assumption that humans perceive, interpret, judge, and emotionally react to the conditions of structure. His theoretical focus is on how relatively macro phenomena (i.e., coalitions, power, [Page 436]solidarity, order) are created, maintained, and destroyed by relatively microlevel phenomena (i.e., perceptions, cognitions, strategies, emotions). His theorizing synthesizes principles of social networks, organizations, identity, judgment, attribution, and emotion.

Educated at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, Lawler's early career focused on mechanisms wherein power structures and coalition opportunities shape partner perceptions and strategies in negotiation. His early streams of work focused on two interrelated dimensions of power. First, a power-dependence branch emerged to link structural dependence to perceptions of power, and importantly, the strategies people adopt in bargaining. This work was pioneering because it made the negotiation process central in social exchange theory. A second branch of Lawler's theorizing dealt with punitive power. Here he brought Richard Emerson's power-dependence theory to bear on notions of deterrence and conflict spiral in political science. From this emerged a theory of bilateral deterrence, which resolved a number of seemingly contradictory findings.

Lawler also has made important strides toward understanding commitment in nested social groups, such as academic units within a college, departments within an organization, or communities within a city. His theory of affective attachments embodies four principal ideas. First, structural limitations on choice and freedom provide actors with a general sense of control over their environment. Second, “flexible” choice situations that foster a sense of self-control result in positive emotions, while “inflexible” choice situations that lessen a sense of control result in negative emotions. As such, emotions follow from decision-making autonomy within some larger hierarchical structure. Third, positive emotions tend to strengthen affective ties to collective units, whereas negative emotions tend to dampen affective ties to collective units. A primary theme in Lawler's work is that emotional reactions are a fundamental basis for commitment and solidarity in groups and organizations. Finally, relative to more distant units, social units that are more proximate to the actor tend to receive more credit for choice and positive emotion.

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