~ 528 THE STUDY OF ORGANIZATION AN ARMY IN THE LABORATORY similarity of attitudes between socially connected pairs aft construction of "pair cards," it becomes possible to trace 'thro:~ structural network, examining the pOints in the network where at" actions begin to diverge. Methods for doing this have not developed but, for the first time, the technical facilities exist just a matter of time until analytical methods are developed. and counter-sorters were methodologically appropriate for the indi istic orientation which survey research has had in the past; electronic puters with large storage capacities are precisely appropriate for tistical analysis of complex social organization. iB Unfortunately, it has not been possible here to present an tools discussed above fully enough to show precisely how it is giving a broad overview of a number of developments, my aim bas point to an important new direction in social research, one which significantly in the systematic study of social organization. CAN YOU REALLY STUDY AN ARMY IN THE LABORATOR Morris Zelditch, Jr. 529 I P though usually small, is no more like small groups found inj ;t;ings than it is like a formal organization. In fact, the laboratory • not like any concrete setting in society. If the laboratory group ~all group, then we would be able to equate the following group force flight crews: L Two air force staff sergeants are seated on either side of an opaque prtition, each under the impression that the other is an air force captain. 'rojected on a screen in front of them is a consecutive series of 38 large rectangles, each composed of 100 smaller black and white rectangles in varying arrangements. Every rectangle contains almost the same number 'tof black as white rectangles, but the sergeants are to decide, for each !One, whether it is more black or more white. Each sergeant makes an 'wtial decision, exchanges opinions with the other, and makes a final "decision for each repetition of the stimulus. The exchange of opinions is controlled by the experimenter: in front of each sergeant there is a :console of switches and lights, which permits one sergeant to operate a itch 00 his own console that flashes a light on the console of the other lIeI'geaot. The circuit passes through a master control panel, permitting the experimenter to arrange any desired pattern of agreement or dis ment between the two sergeants. If the two are made to disagree, h must either change his initial opinion or repeat his initial opinion ib making his final decision. In the same setting, two air force sergeants may each be made to ieve that the other is an airman third class. If this condition is com ~ with that described above, it is found that a "captain" more readily persuades a sergeant that his initial opinion was wrong than an 'airman third class."! . is studied here is no more like an air force flight crew than it is INTRODUCTION No method has more influenced our conception of science than th mental method; no method makes the contemporary sociologi suspicious. The rapid and prolific development of the small seems to argue a contrary thesis. But there is no sounder eviden _ way in which sociologists regard the experiment than the habit them all "small groups" research. And because they think the J~ group is a small group, many sociologists think that larger organiadllil cannot be studied in the laboratory. \ If the idea is that the laboratory group resembles the sm \ of groups found in natural settings, then the idea is wrong. For th This article is published here for the first time. 8Ir force wing, or any other more complex structure. An air force erew has a past, a future, a system of informal social controls, and commitment to a common goal. The two staff sergeants in the 'ry g~oup just described are an ad hoc group, transitory, with no SOCial system that could bring social pressures to bear on the , If ~f either subject, and not much committed to the goal. o~ IS th.e laboratory group more like an informal peer group. Such ~ typically a primary group; the laboratory group is typically not. , d ratory and primary groups are typically small and face-to-face, oes not make the laboratory group a primary group. Faris made ,&.n r,erfectly clear as long ago as 1932. He insisted that size and ce Interaction were not the criteria that defined a primary group, ¥O~h'Commg. P. <?ohen, and M. Zelditch, Status Conceptions in Social Interaction, )f 530 THE STUDY OF ORGANIZATION AN ARMY IN THE LABORATORY ~ because a courtroom, Or a housewife driving if are both small and face-to-face but certainly noo a door-to-d h' 00 r. ' one t Inks theY group . IS a group haVing a t ' groups. A pnmary cer am f norms requmng affective, diffuse particularistic r I system I' 0 ' 0 e re ahons . In laboratory groups. norms are rar:ly found . L .. The fact IS that laboratory investigations are seldom effo the small group per se, and even When they are th . small groups found . , e groups s In natural settings. But 'f h not often lIke . . experIments IS not to study the kinds of groups found in Itepu t . h ' h' na u Just w at IS t elf purpose? The answer has a deceptive simplic purpose of the laboratory experiment is to create certain t. relevant aspects of social situations under controlled conditiol_. the point looks simple, it has fairly profound implications for m issues that are most controversial about the experimental m sociology. I will- therefore first attempt to demonstrate that what just said is so; after which, I will point out some of its more . implications. ~ I will argue that the purpose of experiments is mainly to CODStruct', test theories; that theories are necessarily abstract; and thereforl ments are also necessarily abstract. Consequently, the answer to tion which gives this paper its title is that one would not even study an army in the laboratory, if by that one means an arm concrete sense of the term. One would try only to create th of an army that were relevant to some theory. But from this i 'vthat, if there is any question about the possibility of studying.orgarnz.d in the laboratory, the question can only be: Are there theoretlcall aspects of organizations that cannot be created in a laboratory, question the answer is that nothing inherent in laboratory ex bars us from creating many theoretically relevant aspe.cts of org. But if the abstract organizations so created are not lIke those I~ settings will one ever be able to generalize from the expenm, , I 't S natural created , aspect of an army to the concrete army In , . --1'4 . . IS . no d'ff My answer is first that the SItuatIon I eren t for orgamzattoDllll,_ . . .mves ration' eriments than for' any other sort of analytIc Ig • an - generalization, in the only sense meamng . fl' that u In such a contex , nt rather thanpn' application of a theory supported by expenme . expenmen.. , t If the appro rticular. extrapolation of the results of a smgle of "generalization" is really application of a theory In a pa diction pre . "application" is synonomous with t he exp Ianallon orI_Oppenheim particular event. Therefore, the widely accepted Hempc 'I .\V_ ~ . .. A meriel/II JUllrnal E. Faris, ''The Primary Group: Essence and AccIdent, ology, 38 (1932), 41-50. 2 531 If explanation can be used to study what applicatio~ involves:1 From :y there are two results: On the one hand, there IS no reason why ental results must be dIrectly extrapolated for them to be applied, it is theories that are applied to concrete settings. On the other application al~ays involves at least some knowledge that is not Iteed by expenment; therefore, no amount of expenmental support theory is itself sufficient to warrant its applicability in any particular ABSTRACT CHARACTER RY AND EXPERIMENT experiments are mainly useful in constructing and testing theory is :t from the peculiar character of some of their advantages. 4 Among idms of an experiment are: (1) To create states of affairs difficult to r in natural settings, for example the continual open expression of ment between a status inferior and his superior in an organiza (2) To produce controls and contrasts that are difficult to find ex 'acto in natural settings, for example a high and a low status source 19 an identical suggestion to similar individuals. (3) To replicate that seldom recur under the same conditions in natural settings, as the negotiation by several foreign offices of an international dis nt treaty. (4) To isolate a process from the effects of other processes confuse our understanding of it, such as separating the effects of from the effects of relative competence-expectations in the study of IS superior's influence in an organization. Such concerns are mostly by the desire to build and test a theory, and the special advantages .experiment are mostly advantages from the standpoint of theorists. ~ents would make much less sense if the purpose were to describe lcular concrete situation. That theory is necessarily abstract derives from its desire to be gen It will contain universal statements, such as, "The greater the uncer of an individual about his status the greater the social distance he lIlaintain from status inferiors," r;ther than singular statements such ?hn Smith is uncertain about his status." While the objective is to ~ore and more, the more of one concrete entity a theory explains, SS It explains of any other thing, because any concrete entity is 1: ~~~5a~19P. Oppenheim, "Studies in the Logic of Explanation," Philosophy 48), 135-175. in Gu~\ct and ~. Evan, "Simulated Bureaucracies: A Methodological Analy -!ian 1~6~)' Simulation in Social Science: Readings (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: , , 48-60, which expands this argument. tf kId' H. ~y, 532 THE STUDY OF ORGANIZAnON AN ARMY IN THE LABORATORY 533 5 unique. If it explains everything about General Motors it '11 · F or d M otor Company, much less an army. By a "c WI not e' exp I am . . oncrete I mean a particular object of the phenomenal world. To de 'be'entit' · . I 1 Scn 1· IStS Its properties: ts co or, mass, volume, velocity, age gcnd It' . . 'fi cance, purpose. . .. Th e list ' .IS always , e r , sh pnce, status slgm infinite . . . h d'ff I more comp ete It IS t e mOre It I ers from any other descri ' fand Pion. an "b a stract "h t eory, I mean a system of properties that are thought be ~elated t? e~ch .other dyn~ical1y. A system of abstract properties v~nabl~s ~Ill I~evltab~y omit Some of .the properties of any concrl thlOg: It wIll oml~ ~reclsely those pro~ertles thought to be independent or at least only mlOimally correlated With, those contained in the theoreti system. But omitting SOme properties, the system of abstract variables will. never account for the whole of any concrete entity. It does not expl-' "General Motors," it explains only some property of General Motors. Economics explains General Motors' prices, sociology explains the stabili of its status structure, and so on. Even the language of theory expresses tlds fact. Terms originally meant concretely, such as "bureaucracy," come to mean not the Pentagon or the Bureau of the Budget, but any social system that has a division of labor, a hierarchical structure, some separation fl the kinship, power, and status structures of a community, and so on. Meanl abstractly in this way, some things once thought to be bureaucracies como to seem less so, while others not thought of as bureaucracies at all from a phenomenal point of view come to be objects explained by the theory But often what is similar or different from the point of view of abs theory cannot be formulated except in quite abstract terms: h~n~ use of expressions like "total institutions" or "utilitarian organIzations which do not even incidentally sound concrete. In no other way can theory formulate notions that distinguish two armies, two hospitals, or . prisons from each other, while classifying some hospitals together with some armies and some prisons as one sort of thing. CAN YOU REALLY STUDY AN ARMY IN THE LABORATORY? If no theory can be concrete, and experiments are for the purpose constructing theory, there is no basis for the common argument that III . . 't m expenment ought to be as close as possible to the concrete entity I This point, as well as the whole of the present paper, owes a g~eat ,~e~ec~n' argument made in B. P. Cohen, "On the Construction of EX~lanatl~~s, Report # 19, Laboratory for Social Research, Stanford l!D1Verslt y, 11~ ()r1!QII;Z/l/l, 6 Cf. the argument in A. Etzioni, A Comparative A nalysls of Comp fX (New York: Free Press, 1961), chap. 3. 5 re resents. An experiment aims only to reproduce that part of a IY. Pntity that is made relevant by some particular system of abstract tee Therefore, we do not even try to stu dy armies . III 'thlbo ,Ies. e a ratory, t is meant an army in the concrete sense of the word. We try th a . h create those aspects of armies relevant to some teary. ~herefore, if it is objected that one cannot study an army in the tory, the objection must be that the properties of some theory t to the army cannot be produced under laboratory conditions. this objection be sustained? Size plays an interesting and ambiguous role in such arguments. Ob .y one would not bring an entire army into a laboratory, but does mean that an army cannot be studied in the laboratory? If size is not ,retically relevant there is no reason to reproduce it in the laboratory. :refore, the argument must be that size is, or is correlated with, a prop without which a laboratory group could not simulate what is theoteti relevant about organizations. To refute such an argument, one must that size itself is not relevant; that what is relevant is something else, bly complexity; and finally, that adequate degrees of complexity can be uced independently of size. 7 The rebuttal may be made a little more Iplicated, for propositions about organizations include some in which Iplexity is a variable and some in which it is not. Where complexity is relevant, there is no need to create it even if organizations are typically plex. Where complexity is relevant, we face two possible situations: may be required to produce very great degrees of complexity, say different kinds of subunits and five levels of authority. In this case, . doubtful that a laboratory group will prove adequate to the require It. Even if one could create such an organization-and probably one the cost would be great, and the loss of control over the organiza would ensure that the cost exceeded the return. But if something less such great complexity will do, say three or four kinds of subunits and Or three levels of authority, then nothing precludes constructing com laboratory organizations, and constructing fairly large numbers of lV ~ ,~. process that can be studied in quite small laboratory "organiza • IS ~e way in which stability is built into the status hierarchy of an DilatIOn. Complex organizations typically consist of at least three ,s classes, such as officers, noncommissioned officers, and other en ~n .of the argument is expanded in M. Zelditch and T. K. Hopkins, "Laborain A. Etzioni (ed.), Complex Organizations: I) /o/g/cat Reader (First ed.), (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., ~ 6S~78. There it is argued that the character of formal organizations, for / their COmplexity, high degree of institutionalization, and scale, do not in IfCUrnstances preclude experimentation. Soc' ~en~ents with Organizations," 534 THE STUDY OF ORGANIZATION AN ARMY IN THE LABORATORY listed men in the army; or executives, supervisors, and worker . · sm. factory. Of each status class be hefs are held about their relative ab.I' . . I k B d h Ilt1C~S to perform orgamzatlOna tas s. ase on t ese beliefs, oPPOrtunities to actually perform, evaluations of performance, and rights to influence d c~sio~s ~re distributed. ~~cause it a~cords wjth. the status structure, t;; dlstfibutlOn of OpPortullitles, evaluations, and fights to exercise influence also tends to perpetuate that structure. 8 Of particular importance to the stability of the status structure is the fact that expectations embodied in status are expansive; that is, confronting a new task or actiVity, one not previously associated in anyone's mind with statuses in the organization, members of the organization will often behave as if superiors in the status structure were superior at the new task-providing superiority in the new activity is something the organization positively values. To understand the stability of status hierarchies, it is important to discover under what condi tions status conceptions have this expansive property. It was to study the expansive properties of status that the experi ment described in the second paragraph of this paper was designed. The experiment had some additional features that it now becomes important to understand: The two staff sergeants were told that the task and setting of the experiment were designed to simulate a new kind of decision-makin8 situation being studied by the air force, They were told that the decisions were difficult, but there was a correct choice in every case; that the ex perimenter was interested not in testing their individual abilities, but in finding out how the correct decision was made, so that it was perfectly legitimate to use advice from their co-participant; and that the co participant, who was identified by a fictitious name, was from a different unit than the sergeant himself. Great care was taken to make sure that the task ability, called "contrast sensitivity," was npt already associated with status in the air force. That is, it was not alr'eady associated with the terms "captain," "sergeant," or "airman" in the way cooking might conventionally be associated more with "female" than with "male."o Thus, the sergeants were in a situation where they typically wanted to do well, but the decisions were difficult; where they had help but did no; know their partner well enough to know what ability he might have; an .. . Spl·te of the the only cues were status cues. Under such condillons, m 8 For further theoretical background, see B. Anderson, J. Berger, B. p . Cohen,.. and II M. Zelditch, "Status Classes in Organizations," Administrative Science Quurler '~~li (1966),264- 283; and J. Berger, B. P. Cohen, and M. Zelditch, "Status Char;c~~~;i01!;. and Expe:tat~on States," in J. Berger, M. Zelditch, and. B: Anderson (~Sj)' 0 cal TheOries In Progress, vol. 1 (Boston: Houghton MIfflIn, .196~), 47 ?1""la CliO , Il u 9 J. Berger, B. P. Cohen, and M. Zelditch, Slatus ConcepllOlI 111 SOCIG chap. 5. 535 vance of status to the task ability, the sergeants yielded to the influence the other participant more if he was a captain than if he was an airman. This experiment accomplished three objectives: First, it artificially ted one aspect of the organizational structure of the air force, its status l~ture-though only three of its status levels were used. Second, it ."'cially isolated one process through which status expands, separating :tations from other processes that might obscure them-such as the in which resources, technical knowledge, or power are allocated to ,wses. Third, it created those conditions, but only those conditions that theoretically relevant to the way in which status-related expectations d. It did not embody all the conditions that make a status structure ,Ie, much less all the properties of an air force. ING THE GAP annies are not really brought into the laboratory, what can be said :about an army as a result of a laboratory experiment? Or, to put the pestion as it has been put several times in the past, how does one bridge . gap between experiment and natural setting?lO Usually the problem is thought to be one of generalizing from the :periment, and by "generalizing" people often mean equating concrete tures of the experiment with concrete features of the natural setting. this view, to generalize from the status-expansion experiment one asks the same thing will be found true of staff sergeants outside the laboratory JOOm. But almost certainly it will not. Equating populations in this fashion Will not be sufficient to guarantee the truth of the generalization, for often ~ result will be false of "real live" staff sergeants. On the other hand, it IS not necessary either, for often the result will be true of generals, or 'en COllege professors. If generalization meant equating concrete features of experiment and 1Iatural setting, no bridge between the two would ever be built. But it is .concrete similarities that form the basis of generalization. One gen ::hzes from one situatio~ to anothe~ ~hen both situati??s are described by Instsame abst~act properties and satisfy the same conditIons. Fo~ exampl~: ead of usmg staff sergeants, imagine that the status expanSIOn expen 1b~~t was run in exactly the same way with junior college students as au Jects. In the same interaction conditions, given the same task, subjects ~'8B. Ande!"S0n, The Use of Experimental Data in the [nterprelalioll of. Sl/r~ey tg61). ~Tech.nlcal Report, Bureau of Applied Social Research, Columbia UnIVersIty, Perhn . R!ecken, "Narrowing the Gap between Field Studies and Laboratory roup ents In Social Psychology," [I ems, 8 (1954), 37-42; and S. Verba, Small 90-.10;. and poUI/cal Behavior (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1961), 536 THE STUDY OF ORGANIZATION AN ARMY IN THE LABORATORY would be told that their partner is either a high-school student Or dent at a four-year college. It happens that when this is done h a 8 I · f . th e aIr . f · resu t IS oun d as m orce expenment: sUbjects are much I tes. to be influenced if they are told their partner has the lower statess~ik told that he has the higher state of a status characteristiC.I 1 Wh e t aQ al · f · at al I . us to. ~ener lZe rom one experunent to the other? The task and interac' Condltlons are the same; and the status characteristics, though co . tioa nc, . very dl'fferent, have the same properties from an abstract point of Both embody value jUdgments and expectations of what a perSOn isV~:' 12 and how he will behave. What differences there are, are not differen I that are part of the system of abstract variables forming the theory status characteristics. They are therefore differences that make no difference. It may seem to beg the question to show that the results of one ex periment generalize to the results of another experiment, When the issue appears to be how to generalize to a natural setting. But in fact the probleat is the same: generalization from anyone situation to any other relates, not Concrete settings, but abstract variables. But even if focus is restricted to only those abstract variables that are part of a theoretical system, the results of an experiment are not directly extrapolated, because the results of experiments are always conditional. One does not generalize from an experiment any claim that the initial conditions established by the experiment are those typically found in natural settings. That air force sergeants typically believe officers are superior to enlisted men in ability is not a hypothesis tested or confirmed by the status expansion experiment. Had a sergeant not believed in the status char acteristic, he would not have been a suitable subject for experiment. That the sergeants used in the experiment did believe in the characteristic proves nothing about how many sergeants in the air force believe in its ~ta!UI structure. What is generalized from the experiment is not the descnptlve hypothesis that its initial conditions are found outside the laboratory, but the conditional law that if a status characteristic is present, then int1uen~ is distributed so as to accord with its states. It is a gross fallacy of ex~r~: mental logic to generalize only the consequent of a conditional-th~ Yt in "if x, then y." For what happens then is that the result of the expe:lm~n . nt becomes subtly transformed mto a descnptlOn, sue h as: "I n a n organization . '. like the air force one finds y." But this is not the result of the expenm e . . that f 0 nn The first part of ,the expression is not a set of abstract cond'ItJOns d'tions. the antecedent of a conditional; instead, substituted for such con ~ect is one finds a concrete entity masquerading as the antecedent. The e 11 J. Moore, General Status Characteristics and Specific Performance Expectations, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford University, 1966. 12 See J. Berger, et al., op. cit., pp. 29-46. 537 nsform "y" into a descriptive claim. How often does one hear that ~ showS most people conform," or that "Sherif shows that all groups . te norms?" What one means is that under (abstract) corulitiol7s p, q, r . people conform or make norms. , . 'It might be supposed that one could nevertheless generalize from a e experiment to any natural setting in which the same abstract, ,~ent conditions are found. But even in this sense, a single experi ,t is almost never meant to be directly extrapolated. Rather, one thinks of an experiment as supporting a theory. It is the theory that is used to lIlalce predictions about natural settings. For the fact is that almost never a single experiment decisively informative about a theory. Therefore, any IgIe experiment is simply one part of a larger program, each part testing difterent aspect of the theory. For example, the status-expansion experi iDCnt already described is actually only one of three run at the same time in the same setting, each of which focused on a different phase of the ltus-expansion process. To understand what takes place in some natural setting. therefore, one must understand it in terms of the theory, not of anyone experiment designed to test some aspect of the theory. It is in lhis sense that theory is the bridge between experiment and natural setting, d for this reason that one seldom extrapolates an experiment directly. If generalization from an experiment comes to mean the application of a theoretical formulation supported by that experiment, and by other periments as well, then the difficulties in generalizing from experiments really difficulties in applying theory. There are difficulties in generalizing from experiments, but these difficulties are not peculiar to generalization from experiments. They are difficulties that attend the application of any theories, whether supported by experiments, or by field studies, or by surveys, or indeed by any evidence whatsoever. "Application" here does not mean social engineering, but simply the - of an abstract theory to reason about particular settings. For example, the theory of status characteristics might be applied to questions about the ~tus order of schools in a city school system. In this sense "application" • essentially the same as "explanation" or "prediction" of particular events ~ the paradigm of Hempel and Oppenheim. 13 In this paradigm, explanaQ Or prediction is a deductive argument in which what is to be explained ~fredlcted is shown to be a valid conclusion from two kinds of premises: CO d?~e Or more g~nerallaws; and (2) one or more statements describing ays~1110ns in t~e particular setting. For example, suppose that in city school bat tn S conSIderable resources are to be invested to make racially imanced schOOls equal in objective quality. The purpose is to not only L C. Hempel and P. Oppenheim, op. cit. 538 AN ARMY IN THE LABORATORY THE STUDY OF ORGANIZATION improve their quality, but also to make "Negro" sch I . . 00 s more aUra, to teac h ers, parents, and students by ralsmg their statu Th . . . I' s. e theo h status c aractenShcs unp les that equalizing the obJ'ective . I' qU<l Ity of teac programs, and even student perfonnance in racially imb I d . " a ance sch will not succeed In makmg teachers, parents, and students tt'b , to a " N d eq qua I Ity egro" an d a "h' w lte" school. l1 In fact the st at n ute ' a us or er remain unchanged. The argument is that a status characterist'lc d'ff . . I erenti the schools; and evaluatIOns of school quality are a function of ex . . d d etennme y b status'In d epen d ently of their objective quality. pectali' Th statement is a statement about the particular school system S. The e '" seco. IS a genera I I aw "f rom th e t heory 0 f status characteristics. This application assumes, first, that the ordering of schools in school systems is a status phenomenon of the kind formulated in the theo: of status characteristics; second, that particular conditions in the scb system have been correctly described; and third, that important 0 factors, not fonnulated by the theory, can be safely neglected in city school systems. Each of these assumptions can be disputed. While race 018' satisfy the definition of a status characteristic, it is still possible that scb systems fall outside the scope of the theory, This would be the case i race were an individual but not a collective property in the system. to In that case, schools would not be thought of as "Negro" or "white" and theory might have nothing to say about their relative ordering. Even . race were a collective property, and the theory was applicable to schoo. in city school systems, the descriptive knowledge used in the applicatioa might be wrong. The schools might actually differ in objective quality, or it might be wrong to suppose that the status of schools in the s~stem. depends on the "quality" attributed by people to the schools. Even. If t descriptive knowledge is accurate, the effect of interscholastic athletl~.h been ignored and might be sufficiently important to change any predictions , 'fcs made about status ordering from a knowledge of status charactens I alone. . 1 What is important about such disputes is that they do not simp. . ] 'Ie d has been conthe theory that . IS app th depend on the degree to which . bI'/'tty, no t aboutdb'I finned. They are disputes about the theory's appllca evidence in its favor. Some disputes about applicability can be re~olve we experimental means, For example, the effect of proc.ess es t at pli"". neglected in confirming a theory but become important In some ap "" . . . of De Facl, J4 B. P. Cohen, White ExpectatIOns and Negro AspiratIOns: One .vIe: search. SIan School Segregation" (Technical Report # 18, Laboratory for SocIal e ford University, 1965). en Individu )5 See the paper by P, Lazarsfeld and H, Menzel, "On the Relation betwe and Collective Properties," in this volume, pp. 499-516. 539 sometimes be studied in the laboratory, On the other hand, some about applicability cannot be resolved by such means. They de descriptive knowledge of the particular situation, and no amount .;:rirnental investigation w~ provide suc~ knowle?ge. There/ore, no tion can ever depend entlrely on experzmental znvestigation. ARY ~e argued that experiments are mainly for the purpose of building and theories; that theories are necessarily abstract; therefore, experi Its tOO are abstract. Neither the organizational experiment, nor any kind of experiment, attempts to recreate a completely "real" instance _y concrete organization in the laboratory, One would not even want bring an army into the laboratory, much less defend the possibility of I 1y doing so. lf the laboratory organization creates only the aspects of an organi relevant to some theory, then only a theory can bridge the gap be experiment and natural setting, I have rejected the view that gen-: .tion requires direct extrapolation of the results of a single experi It. In place of it I have suggested that experiments are relevant to , and theorY.is. <ipplied to natural settings. Two interesting conse .ccs follow: First, if an experiment is informative for a theory, and the applicable in a given setting, the findings of an experiment are :eralizable" even if they bear little resemblance to the typical findings 1be natural setting, For if theory is thought of as a bridge, the main . ment of the bridge is that it span both settings, not that the two be identical. Put a little less metaphorically, if /1 is found in an ex ent and fz in some natural setting, it is sufficient for some theory to ~ both /1 and L for that theory to bridge the gap. It is not required I = /2' But second, if the Hempel-Oppenheim paradigm is accepted :applying to an application, then application uses not only laws from some 'ry, but also descriptive knowledge about some domain of application. :fo.re experimental support for a theory is never sufficient warrant for applicability. But the situation is no different for theories supported by :y or other sorts of field evidence; whatever the evidence for the '~, the problem of application remains, Hence the problems of ap IliOn raise no special objections to experimental studies of organizations.