News & Events

Social Commitments in a Depersonalized World with Edward J. Lawler

Time & Location: The Cornell Club, 6 East 44th Street (between Madison and Fifth) in Manhattan from 6:30pm to 9:00pm

The ties people form with each other and with organizations tend to be increasingly transactional. What are the bases upon which people form and sustain ties to groups and organizations in today’s world? If employer organizations reveal little commitment to their employees, why would employees develop much commitment to those organizations? If nation states are less effective at serving or protecting their citizenry, why would citizens maintain the same level of commitment to their nations?

Professor Lawler will discuss his new book, which portrays the commitments of people to small groups, work organizations, communities, or even nations as a powerful, mobilizing force, but one that is being threatened or weakened by major social transformations underway. He offers a general theoretical account of how people themselves generate and sustain order and predictability, emphasizing the importance of collaborative activities that generate positive feelings and suggests that, in the global, individualized, and transactional world we live in today, person to group ties or commitments are even more important sources of order and stability, especially as ties among people become more episodic, shallow, and fragile.

Edward J. Lawler is the Martin P. Catherwood Professor of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University. He received his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 1971 and spent 22 years on the University of Iowa faculty before coming to the ILR School in 1994 as a professor in the department of organizational behavior . He served as dean of the ILR School from 1997-2005. Among his honors is the Cooley-Mead Award for career contributions to social psychology in 2002.