Discuss the Homan's Social Exchange Theory.

Exchange theory is one of the most influential of contemporary approaches to interpersonal relations and by extension group behavior. This theory focuses on the individual to individual dealings among the people who happen to make up the group. The holistic aspect of the group, as emphasized by the field theory is less important, Exchange theory's primary concerned is to analyze the way individuals control one anothers behavior by exchanging rewards and costs. It tackles the problem by assuming from the start that people in relationship as well in the economic market try to maximize the rewards they receive, and minimize the costs they incur, by seeking rewarding experiences and avoiding painful ones.

Rewarding others usually requires that you give up something (time; effort or whatever). George C. Homans, the originator of exchange theory, labels what you give up as costs on interaction. He then assumes that people are profit-seekers in interaction, in that they will seek out and maintained high profit interaction, while letting low-profit ones lapse. However, as exchange theorists Thibaut and Kelley (1954) have pointed out how a high profit rate must be in order to motivate to maintain a relationship with a very low profit rate if it is nevertheless. better than any one of your alternative possibilities.

Obviously, for a group to emerge, the members will have to have repeated interactions with one another, and the means they must develop and maintain mutually satisfactory patters of reward/cost exchange. From the point of view of exchange theory, this is not easy, since each member is assumed to be maximizing his/her own gain. However, it is assumed that once the group emerges, the members if they stay in it, find the group rewarding (or at least more rewarding than the available alternatives). Therefore, they are willing to develop some norms to regulate exchanges in the interest of preserving the common goal.

Among the norms developed will be rules of distinctive justice that define what is a fair exchange between members. An exchange is fair, says Homans, when the rewards are in proportion to each member's contribution. According to Homans, if you put more into an interaction than someone else, you feel you should get more out of it than they do. If you get less than “is fair", you are likely to feel angry and seek some redress. Exchange theorists who have pushed the notion of distributive justice norms (called equity theorists) argue that you may get some help in seeking redress since groups actively attempt to enforce distributive justice norms by rewarding members who abide by them and pressuring and punishing members who don't. However, both Homans and the equity theorists recognize that difficulty may still arise because members may not be in complete agreement about the value of varying rewards and contributions.

Using these basic concepts, exchange theorists have attempted to account for a wide variety of group phenomena, including the emergence of status hierarchies, the problems of states inconsistency, the exercise of leadership, and the problem of social control.

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