This is a disappointing book. Bales has taken as his goal the articulation of a grand theory of social interaction. As with his previous work, the primary failure of this book is in adequately integrating the work of other researchers and theorists. The book presents little that is new. What it does achieve is a summary of the life work of one of the most influential small group researchers of the century. The book digs back to the origins of Bales's thinking about social interaction and credits mentors and collaborators as they contributed to the development of SYMLOG. There is an extensive bibliography, but very few of the articles and books listed in the bibliography are actually cited in the text of the book.. As an example, the book claims to present a new field theory. The work of Kurt Lewin (the originator of social field theory) is listed in the bibliography but not cited in the text. For those who seek a single source that sums up the work of R.F. Bales, this is an excellent source. For those seeking a grand theory of social interaction, the wait must continue.

This is a challenging and inspiring book, but it is also adifficult book because it forces us to think about the subject matterof our discipline in completely new ways. We are requested to abandon our traditionally established pattern of conceptualizing social events, and to adopt an unfamiliar paradigm, a paradigm (in T. Kuhn's sense) that requires an entirely new level of complexity in the basic premises of conceptualizing the interplay between personality, group dynamics, and organizational pattern.

Bales has never attempted to be a theoretician on a grand scale. However, he has built on the foundation prepared by E. Durkheim on the division of labor, M. Weber on bureaucratic structure, P. Sorokin on global values, K. Lewin on group dynamics, E. Bogardus on attitudes and values, W. I. Thomas & F. Znaniecki on the social situation, and other theoreticians like G. H. Mead in Mind, Self, and Society, and T. Parsons' grand scale effort in The Structure of Social Action. However, the central perspective of thinkers like F. Heider in The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations and A. Schutz in The Phenomenology of the Social World are not represented.

Throughout more than 50 years of thinking and research Bales has consistently tried to come to grips with the problem: How is it that every human being, more or less successfully, masters the intricacy and complexity of the everyday social world, while so far none of the above-mentioned thinkers have been able to produce an adequate analysis of Social Interaction Systems? A seemingly straightforward question to ask, but an incredibly complex one to answer.

In trying to penetrate to the core of this dilemma for our discipline, Bales has analyzed the efforts of these pioneers, who have, each in his own way, struggled with this formidable task. In doing so Bales has attempted to expose the essential prerequisites which have to be met in order to develop a comprehensive theory of Social Interaction Systems.

As Bales makes clear in Chapter Seven, it is imperative that our perspective on the minimum prerequisite for the conceptual structure of such a comprehensive theory requires an extension from the dyadic to the triadic entity as on basic premise four our paradigm. G. Simmel was the first to point out the fundamental difference between the dyad as the basic social entity and the triad as such an entity. A second pressing question is how to make sense out of the fact that we are faced with a multitude of complex interlocking self-organizing systems on whatever level of analysis we start from. Bales' third and most important point is the centrality of the concept of values, equally central in social science as the concept of force in physics, and the concept of DNA in biology. Bales also makes clear that these prerequisites must be built into the methodology for valid research instruments for the study of social events.

At present we can only vaguely envision what kind of effects such a fundamental recast of our thinking-frame will imply for future theoreticians in the social sciences.

It will be necessary for theoreticians of the future to face the challenge Bales has presented here. In summing up his life-work in the book Social Interaction Systems, Bales has presented us with a scaffolding flexible and strong enough to support such an intricate theoretical structure, and a bridge firm enough to carry the burden of proofs mediating between abstract concepts about and the complex reality of social life.

(Recommend also: Bales, et al, SYMLOG--A System for the Multiple Level Observation of Groups.)

In one volume Bales brings together 50 years of research observing laboratory groups and leading self-analytic groups of students at Harvard as his contribution to a yet to be developed comprehensive theory of social interaction systems that will provide measures for all aspects of the theory. The major findings over the years are cast in the framework of a three dimensional social perceptual space that has been discovered over and over again in social psychology. The three dimensions are: Dominant versus submissive (Upward- Downward), Friendly versus unfriendly (Positive-Negative),and Task oriented and conforming to group or organizational norms versus nonconforming (Forward-Backward). When Bales first began to do research, in the 1930s, social psychology concentrated on understanding an individual problem solver (the self) dealing with a "situation." The situation turns out to be composed of a set of nested social interaction systems, ranging in size from small groups, through organizations, to societies and cultures. At each system level the values of the individuals are at the top of the cybernetic hierarchy in determining the limits and direction of social interaction. One of Bales's major contributions for the analysis of groups has been to define the major factors in the value domain and to provide both a method of observation and a questionnaire for the description of values. Although the interpretations based on earlier publications (Interaction Process Analysis, 1950; Personality and Interpersonal Behavior, 1970; and, with Cohen, SYMLOG, 1979) may be familiar to readers, the analysis of the Field Diagrams representing images of team members and concepts related to team and organizational behavior have not been published before. The data base is some 500,000 ratings made by managers, mainly in US organizations, during team building and other organizational activities conducted by consultants using the methods of the SYMLOG Consulting Group that was founded by Bales, Koenigs, and Cowen in 1983. A second major contribution is to reveal the convergence on a optimum profile for effectiveness for teams and organizations. The perspective derived from the Harvard and SYMLOG Consulting Group research is compared and contrasted with that of other early and more current perspectives, such as those of J. L. Moreno and Kurt Lewin. In an Appendix, Bales has provided descriptions of the 26 principal combinations of the three dimensions in terms of the behavior, values, personality, interaction characteristics, observers' and self ratings, and value statements that can be expected for each type.