The concept of power has been central to social exchange theory since its early development. Peter Blau (1964) included “power” in the title of his classic theory of exchange; Richard Emerson's (1972a, 1972b) exchange formulation was built upon his earlier analysis of power-dependence relations; and theories and research on power have dominated the contemporary development of the sociological exchange tradition for the past thirty years (see Molm 2000 for a review).

Although social exchange theories are typically formulated at an abstract level designed to apply to different settings and different levels of analysis, several features make them particularly well suited for application to organizations. The participants in social exchange, called actors, can be either individual persons or collective actors such as teams or organizations, and either specific entities or interchangeable occupants of structural positions (e.g., the CEO of a firm). Actors are connected to one another in dyadic relations, and those relations are typically embedded in larger exchange networks of variable size and complexity, making social exchange theories appropriate for analysis of both intra- and inter-organizational power relations. Finally, the very concept of exchange is central to most organizational analyses.

Social exchange theory is most appropriately viewed as a framework or theoretical orientation that includes numerous specific theories. All social exchange theories share certain concepts and assumptions, but they also differ in various respects.