| Theories of internal selection view focus on internal social and political contests affecting resource allocation decisions and the selective retention of certain projects or lines of businesses over others. While some work within the evolutionary tradition has begun to examine dynamic patterns of change, it has often done so at the level of organizational populations and has emphasized primarily environmental factors in developing theories of externally driven change. In this study, I explore mechanisms of internal selection that affect divestiture of some units over others in the U.S. paper industry from 1983 to 1992.;I adopt a network perspective in suggesting that multiunit organizations comprised of horizontally related production units may be conceptualized as a network and the units as network actors. In doing so, I analyze a sample consisting of multiple networks where explanatory measures, including unit and organizational structural measures may vary across time. I find that unit level centrality, based on ties created via interfirm managerial migration, negatively impacts the likelihood of unit divestiture, contingent on other sources of unit power, features of the overall organizational network, and other contextual factors. Several important theoretical implications are discussed. |
