Most of Lazer's work is based on the idea that how people and organizations are connected together is critical to understanding the functioning, success and failure of actors and systems. Lazer's teaching and institution building have all centered on that theme. He has taken that essential idea and, with a variety of collaborators, examined a wide array of domains.His research covers everything from very micro social influence processes within groups, to the very macro the development of global-wide regulatory regimes. Thus, for example, he has looked at how a network of trade treaties abruptly emerged in the Europe of the 1860s, how attitudes and social structures co-evolve, and, in more recent work how the pattern of relationships affects how hard people work on teams, and how small world networks can result in system-wide 'group think.'