Professions, of which academic disciplines are a special case, compete with one another for resources and authority based on their claim to specialized expertise (see especially, Abbott, 1988). Thus, interdisciplinary cooperation is normally resisted, despite lip service, because it threatens a discipline's resource base by eroding its claim to unique knowledge. Gibbons' assault on the artificial barriers between disciplines is therefore thoughtful and welcome. His general arguments, moreover, are ones with which I find it hard to disagree - such as his view that 'the most successful literatures are those that blend detailed description, informal theory, and formal modeling' (p. 146). And like at least some other sociologists (cf. White, 1992), I support the quest for formal models and have occasionally indulged in them myself (Granovetter and Soong, 1986, 1988). But the destination that Gibbons and I both seek may require longer and more arduous travel than he imagines. I want to focus less on the content of the models themselves than on the way in which they articulate with broader, especially noneconomic, theoretical concerns about organizations.