The product of nearly a decade of theoretical and empirical work on power in social exchange networks, this book describes the progression of a theoretically driven, cumulative program of experimental research, begun at Emory University in the mid-1980s and completed at the University of Arizona. During that 10-year period, many of the results of the individual experiments in the program were published in journals, the typical outlet for experimental research.

As the program progressed and both empirical findings and theoretical knowledge began to cumulate, however, I became more and more frustrated with the impossibility of conveying the substance of the whole in a series of pieces, each of which had to stand more or less on its own. The logic and significance of each successive experiment depended substantially on what had gone before and, as that earlier body of work became larger and larger, the journal format could no longer accommodate what I wanted to say. This book has given me that opportunity.

In writing this book, I had two different, but related, objectives. One was to compare reward-based and coercive forms of power in social exchange relations: how they are different, why they are different, and the implications of those differences for both theory and social relationships. The results of this analysis offer important insights and challenges for both social exchange theory (which traditionally has ignored the role of punishment and coercion in social relationships) and theories of coercive power (which traditionally have ignored the capacities of actors, in most relations, to reward as well as to punish each other).