Social Integration and the Control of Competition

Blau's theory of social integration emphasizes the individual's ability to make himself approachable and thereby become integrated into the group. However, since it is to the group's interest to have integrated members, the theory must go further to describe how a group makes certain that its members will be and remain approachable to one another. A group solves these problems through control of admission and through minimal norms. A major norm, controlling competition, is demostrated with data from a business office and a factory, and it is shown how office and factory groups differ structurally in means of controlling competition.