This book originated in an analysis of government bureaucracies. Peter Blau was led to wonder whether corresponding patterns are observable in the administrative structures of other types of organisations. This text examines the institutions of higher education, which Blau believes are the formal organisations that differ most in objectives and performance from government bureaucracies.

Upon its publication in 1962, this book became one of the founding texts of organizational sociology. Bringing together diverse approaches, it presented a new focus of interest: the formal organization. Blau and Scott raised the level of analysis from attention solely on individual participants and work groups to a broader understanding of organizations as collective actors. In the book, the authors reviewed multiple types of studies-including case studies, experimental research, and surveys-and integrated them to define new central themes. They used their own empirical studies of two social welfare agencies to illustrate the ways in which varying organizational contexts shape work group and participant attitudes and activities. Formal Organizations served to integrate research on both formal and informal systems, authority and leadership, and stressed the importance of links to the wider environment. This reissue, which includes a new introduction by Scott, makes this seminal work accessible to a new generation of scholars and practitioners.

Peter M. Blau and Otis Dudley Duncan pen a classic source of empirical information on the patterns of occupational achievement in American society. Based on an unusually comprehensive set of data, The American Occupational Structure is renowned for its pioneering methods of statistical analysis, as well as its far-reaching conclusions about social stratification and occupation mobility in the United States. Presenting "sociology at its scientific best" (Fortune), The American Occupation Structure received the Sorokin Award of the American Sociological Association in recognition of its significant contribution to the social sciences.