To this day Blau is seen
in social psychology (along with George
Homans) as one of the intellectual progenitors
of modern exchange theory in structural social
psychology.
While this strand of Blau’s work may appear
anomalous from the point of view of his later
focus on macrostructure, it is important not
to be misled by the issue of scale (micro
versus macro). Even at this early stage Blau
showed a predilection for a distinctive style of
Durkheimian explanation, in which individuallevel
outcomes in small groups (competitiveness,
cooperativeness, orientation toward peers
and clients, etc.) were seen as at least partly
derivable from ‘‘structural effects’’ (Blau 1960a)
associated with the overall distribution of these
qualities in the group, and with the position
of the individual in the network of relations
of the group.