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The article discusses the integration of ecological issues, particularly climate change, into economic sociology. Economic sociologists are increasingly focusing on environmental concerns, utilizing tools from political economy and market perspectives. The interview with Jens Beckert and Neil Fligstein highlights the need to address the ecological crisis within a broader societal context, examining the relationship between capitalism, resource use, and climate change. The scholars emphasize the importance of understanding how societies respond to environmental threats and the role of corporations, policies, and societal norms in addressing climate change. [Extracted from the article]

Neil Fligstein of Department of Sociology, University of California reviews "The Ends of Freedom: Reclaiming America's Lost Promise of Economic Rights" by Mark Paul. The Econlit abstract of this book begins: "Explores the role of the state in structuring and limiting the reach of markets, promoting the view that the United States can eradicate poverty and build an economy that works for everyone by adopting social and economic rights." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the same time, workers' collective organizations were greatly weakened in many countries, conglomerate firms were dismantled and the state was expected to reduce its redistributive functions and focus instead on providing a regulatory framework in which markets would do the work of coordinating the economy. While sociologists dealing with the economy during the post-war period did so primarily from an organizational and a (Marxist) political economy perspective, the shift from the state and conglomerate firms to globalized markets opened up new research topics around market operations. Keywords: economic sociology; embeddedness; socio-economics; political economy; theory (up to five); A13 General Economics - Relation of Economics to Social Values; B55 Current Heterodox Approaches - Social Economics; Z1 Cultural Economics; Economic Sociology; Economic Anthropology (up to three) EN economic sociology embeddedness socio-economics political economy theory (up to five) A13 General Economics - Relation of Economics to Social Values B55 Current Heterodox Approaches - Social Economics Z1 Cultural Economics Economic Sociology Economic Anthropology (up to three) 703 720 18 06/09/23 20230401 NES 230401 We are all political economists now Correspondence: marion.fourcade@gmail.com The Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (SASE) was born in 1989 out of the normative aspiration to anchor economic institutions and processes in communitarian values as opposed to egoistic ones. The coordinated western post-war economies went through a profound crisis from the 1970s onwards and a new policy regime began to take shape that relied on liberalized markets instead of state coordination. [Extracted from the article]

American society has now been living in the wake of shareholder value capitalism for four decades. The shareholder value movement began as an invasion of the market for corporate control by financially oriented investors who critiqued sitting managers as not paying sufficient attention to the interests of shareholders during the economic crisis of the 1970s. It altered the relationship between financial markets and the managers of publicly held corporations. Subsequently, publicly held corporations have worked to raise share prices any way they can. While managers initially resisted shareholder value initiatives, they came to embrace them when their pay became tied to the share price. This created an incentive to discover new forms of financial extraction whenever a given set of strategies stopped producing new gains. We consider the impact that these reorganizations had on inequality and the relationship between shareholder value capitalism and financialization. We end by discussing the continuing relevance of shareholder value for understanding contemporary American capitalism. We also identify several avenues for future research on the evolution and consequences of shareholder value in the twenty-first century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Innovation does not just involve the creation of new products, but also includes the need for new kinds of processes and organizations. Field theory can help us understand why some innovations are more piecemeal and others more revolutionary. It explicitly links innovation to the process of the emergence, adjustment, and transformation of markets (conceived of as fields). To illustrate this perspective, the case of the transition in the U.S. from a mortgage market dominated by savings and loan banks to the emergence of mortgage securitization dominated by the government sponsored enterprises and the largest private banks, is explicated. Field theory helps us understand the logic of this transition and the myriad players and innovations that helped produce a large part of what we consider to be modern finance. The case also shows the limits of economic theories of financial innovation and the sociology of finance. I end with a discussion of how field theory can inform subsequent research on innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Organizational theory was one of the roots of the "new" economic sociology. In recent years, a set of complementary research programs have come to the fore that augment our understanding of the social structuring of markets. These include an interest in the role of conventions and commensuration, market devices, the performativity of economics, and the role of morality in the construction of markets. These other interests have come to enrich our conception of the ways in which "the social" structures market activities. While this has decentered some of the emphasis on organizations, there are still active research programs pushing forward new ideas that are focused on organizations, institutions, and networks in economic sociology. We discuss some of the recent work on organizational logics, inter‐ and intra‐organizational networks, and social movements and organization. We note there has also been some hybridity as scholars borrow from each other's toolkits in order to deepen our knowledge of the way the economy works. Organizational theory remains a main theoretical mainstay of economic sociology, but it has now been joined by additional perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This comment was prepared for a Special Issue of the Journal of European Public Policy on the construction of the EU's Political Identity in Policy edited by Sabine Saurugger and Mark Thatcher. The ECB described by Jones, on the other hand, is an organization that has at least three policy domains, one of which organizes banks, another that contains member state governments' central banks, and a third that sits to make policy, all of which exist at a supranational level. There is always a mention of EU organizations, sometimes a mention of member state governments, but there is little mention of other stakeholders like traders, lobbying groups, or civil society associations. It is not just the contradiction between the supranational EU and the intergovernmental EU which restricts a more united Europe from happening. [Extracted from the article]

One of the puzzles about the financial crisis of 2008 is why regulators, particularly the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), were so slow to recognize the impending collapse of the financial system and its broader consequences for the economy. We use theory from the literature on culture, cognition, and framing to explain this puzzle. Consistent with recent work on "positive asymmetry," we show how the FOMC generally interpreted discomforting facts in a positive light, marginalizing and normalizing anomalous information. We argue that all frames limit what can be understood, but the content of frames matters for how facts are identified and explained. We provide evidence that the Federal Reserve's primary frame for making sense of the economy was macroeconomic theory. The content of macroeconomics made it difficult for the FOMC to connect events into a narrative reflecting the links between foreclosures in the housing market, the financial instruments used to package the mortgages into securities, and the threats to the larger economy. We conclude with implications for the sociological literatures on framing and cognition and for decision-making in future crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2007-2009 financial crisis was centered on the US mortgage industry. This article develops a distinctly sociological explanation of that crisis by focusing on the organization of firms in the production of mortgage-backed securities. We use archival and secondary sources to show that the industry became dominated by an 'industrial' conception of control whereby financial firms vertically integrated in order to capture profits in all phases of the mortgage industry. The results of multivariate regression analyses show that the 'industrial' model drove the deterioration in the quality of securities that firms issued and significantly contributed to the eventual failure of the firms that pursued the strategy. Among large banks globally, those which were more vertically integrated also experienced greater investment losses. The findings challenge existing conventional accounts of the crisis and provide important theoretical implications for the social-scientific study of financial markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The financial crisis of 2007 to 2009 was marked by widespread fraud in the mortgage securitization industry. Most of the largest mortgage originators and mortgage-backed securities issuers and underwriters have been implicated in regulatory settlements, and many have paid multibillion-dollar penalties. This article seeks to explain why this behavior became so pervasive. We evaluate predominant theories of white-collar crime, finding that theories emphasizing deregulation or technical opacity identify only necessary, not sufficient, conditions. Our argument focuses instead on changes in competitive conditions and firms’ positions within and across markets. As the supply of mortgages began to decline around 2003, mortgage originators lowered credit standards and engaged in predatory lending to shore up profits. In turn, vertically integrated mortgage-backed securities issuers and underwriters committed securities fraud to conceal this malfeasance and enhance the value of other financial products. Our results challenge several existing accounts of how widespread the fraud should have been and, given the systemic crimes that occurred, which financial institutions were the most likely to commit fraud. We consider the implications of our results for regulations that were based on some of these models. We also discuss the overlooked importance of illegal behavior for the sociology of markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Union's (EU) political and economic integration project has grown dramatically since its inception in 1952. While the ultimate goal of the EU is unclear, one of its aspirations has been to attempt to create European citizens. The idea is that over time, citizens would look towards Europe as their main national identity. While the political and economic integration projects are quite far along, the national identity project has lagged far behind. The number of people who have primarily a European identity is quite small and has not increased much in the past 20 years. There is a far larger number of citizens for whom their national identity is paramount, but a European identity also exists. Since 2005, this group has grown smaller and the number of citizens with only a national identity has grown larger. This article argues that the EU integration project has pushed citizens to value their national identities more and to look to their national governments to protect them. We examine the evidence for this in the context of the 2007–9 financial crisis. We show that in countries most seriously hit by the crisis, national identities have increased dramatically and citizens with some European identity have decreased. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2007-2009 financial crisis initially appeared to have destroyed a huge amount of wealth in the United States. Housing prices dropped about 21% across the country and as much as 50% in some places, and the stock market dropped by nearly 50% as well. This chapter examines how the financial crisis differentially affected households at different parts of the income and wealth distributions. Our results show that all households lost about the same percentage of their wealth in that period. But because households in the top 10% of the wealth distribution owned many different kinds of assets, their wealth soon recovered. The bottom 80% of the wealth distribution had more of their wealth tied up in housing. We show that financial distress, indexed by foreclosures, being behind in mortgage payments, and changes in house prices were particularly concentrated in households in the bottom 80% of the wealth distribution. These households lost a large part of their wealth and have not yet recovered. Households that were most deeply affected were those who entered the housing market late and took out subprime loans. African American and Hispanic households were particularly susceptible as they bought houses late in the price bubble often with subprime loans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

My goal here is twofold. First, I want to introduce the theory of strategic action fields to the law audience. The main idea in field theory in sociology is that most social action occurs in social arenas where actors know one another and take one another into account in their action. Scholars use the field construct to make sense of how and why social orders emerge, reproduce, and transform. Underlying this formulation is the idea that a field is an ongoing game where actors have to understand what others are doing in order to frame their actions. Second, I want to argue that there is a great deal of theoretical leverage to be gained by considering law as a field. To make all of this more concrete, I use field theory to offer a stylized account of the rise of the "shareholder value" movement of the 1980s and the use of agency theory as the dominant theory of corporate governance to justify the shareholder value revolt. I end by considering whether or not field theory has normative implications useful for the law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the financial economy has expanded beginning in the mid-1980s, it has done so in part by selling more products to individuals and households. Households have had more access to new forms of assets and debts and new ways to fund their lifestyles. This occurred at the same time that income inequality and job insecurity increased dramatically in the USA. We show that a more risk-taking culture that engages in more active financial management emerges amongst the middle and upper middle classes.We suggest that these households are feeling the effects of growing inequality at the top more acutely and they respond by changing how they think about their financial lives. For those lower on the socio-economic status distribution, financial strategies are more of a defensive strategy to get by. Those at the top embrace finance as an opportunity to preserve and extend their lifestyles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The worldwide financial crisis that began in 2007 was set off by the collapse of the subprime mortgage market in the USA. The crisis simultaneously reverberated to banks around the world, and eventually brought about a worldwide recession. The biggest banks in the developed world got in trouble because they were pursuing the same strategies to make profit as the American banks. They had joined the market in the USA for mortgage-backed securities and funded them by borrowing in the asset-backed commercial paper market. When the housing market turned down, they suffered the same fate as their US counterparts. Financial deregulation played a complex role in this process. Most of the banks that participated in this market came from countries where financial deregulation occurred. But not all banks from countries with financial deregulation entered this market. Countries with high levels of financial deregulation also experienced deeper recessions, suggesting that in the home market, banks had taken on riskier loans as well. Our study makes a broader theoretical point, suggesting that subsequent studies of global finance and financial markets need to consider the identities and strategies of the banks as their tactics explain a lot about how the global markets for different financial products are structured. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An interview with professor Neil Fligstein of the University of California, Berkeley is presented. Fligstein discusses the concept of social structure and the theory of conventional opposition on macro-social and micro-social orders. He views the discovery of the idea of strategic action field as organizational sociology in the politics and economics of U.S. government. He also outlines the benefits of large corporations in the economic development of the country.

The authors respond to Stephen Fuchs' review of their book "A Theory of Fields," published within the issue. Topics discussed include the alternative conception of field theory the authors are seeking to advance, Fuchs' perceived opposition to the idea that theory can be informed by empirical work, and the synthesis of empirical work. Also mentioned are the agency/structure problem, the construction of social space, and field theory's consistency with quantitative methods and case study.

The discovery of meso-level social orders in organizational theory, political sociology, and social movement theory, what have subsequently been called sectors, policy domains, and most popularly, fields (or in organizational sociology, organizational fields), opens up a theoretical terrain that has not yet been fully explored (see Martin, 2003 for one view offields). In this chapter, we propose that in fact all of these phenomena (and several others), fields, domains, policy domains, sectors, networks, and in game theory, the "game" bear a deep theoretical relationship to one another. They are all a way of characterizing how meso-level social orders, social spaces are constructed. We want to make a bold claim: the idea of fields is the central sociological construct for understanding all arenas of collective strategic action. The idea offields is not just useful for understanding markets and political policy domains, but also social movements, and many other forms of organized social hfe. In essence, scholars working on their particular empirical corner of the world have inadvertently discovered something fundamental about social structure: that collective actors somehow manage to work to get "action" toward their socially and cultural constructed ends and in doing so, enlist the support of others in order to produce meso-level social orders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Early theorists of European integration speculated that economic integration would lead to political integration and a European identity. A European identity has not displaced national identities in the EU, but, for a significant share of EU citizens, a European identity exists alongside a national identity. At the same time, political parties asserting more traditional nationalist identities and policies have directed their dissatisfaction against immigrants, foreigners and, sometimes, the EU. Those who participate in 'Europe' are more likely to develop a European identity, while those whose economic and social horizons are essentially local are more likely to assert nationalist identities. It is argued in this article that the issue of European and national identity plays a heightened role in European politics, particularly in the economic crisis of 2007-11. The resolution of that crisis, which may result in increased European political co-operation, will have to take into account highly salient national identities that have so far resisted such co-operation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article sets a new agenda for research on the trajectory of Chinese capitalism. We first critically review the conflicting views on the causes of China's economic development. Then we suggest that insights from the comparative capitalism and economic sociology literatures can provide theoretical tools to understand the critical features of Chinese capitalism in a more systematic manner. The comparative capitalism literature can help us understand how Chinese capitalism resembles or differs from other varieties of capitalism in terms of the relationships between government, firms, and workers. The literature on economic sociology provides insights about how particular markets have evolved and become stabilized. We use these perspectives to suggest a set of possible research agendas for studying Chinese capitalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years there has been an outpouring of work at the intersection of social movement studies and organizational theory. While we are generally in sympathy with this work, we think it implies a far more radical rethinking of structure and agency in modern society than has been realized to date. In this article, we offer a brief sketch of a general theory of strategic action fields (SAFs). We begin with a discussion of the main elements of the theory, describe the broader environment in which any SAF is embedded, consider the dynamics of stability and change in SAFs, and end with a respectful critique of other contemporary perspectives on social structure and agency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reviews the article "Winner-Take-All Politics: Public Policy, Political Organization, and the Precipitous Rise of Top Incomes in the United States" by Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson, which appears in the June 1, 2010 issue of the journal "Politics & Society."

The current crisis in the mortgage securitization industry highlights significant failures in our models of how markets work and our political will, organizational capability, and ideological desire to intervene in markets. This article shows that one of the main sources of failure has been the lack of a coherent understanding of how these markets came into existence, how tactics and strategies of the principal firms in these markets have evolved over time, and how we ended up with the economic collapse of the main firms. It seeks to provide some insight into these processes by compiling both historical and quantitative data on the emergence and spread of these tactics across the largest investment banks and their principal competitors from the mortgage origination industry. It ends by offering some policy proscriptions based on the analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data from 62 U.S. industries for 1984–2000, this article explores the connections between shareholder value strategies, such as mergers and layoffs, and related industry-level changes, such as de-unionization, computer technology, and profitability. In line with shareholder value arguments, mergers occurred in industries with low profits, and industries where mergers were active subsequently saw an increase in layoffs. Industries with a high level of mergers increased investment in computer technology. This technology displaced workers through layoffs and was focused on reducing unionized workforces. Contrary to shareholder value arguments, there is no evidence that mergers or layoffs returned industries to profitability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sociology of markets has been one of the most vibrant fields in sociology in the past 25 years. There is a great deal of agreement that markets are social structures characterized by extensive social relationships between firms, workers, suppliers, customers, and governments. But, like in many sociological literatures, the theory camps that have formed often seem to speak by each other. We show that some of the disagreement between theory camps is due to differences in conceptual language, and other disagreements stem from the fact that theory camps ignore the concepts in other theory camps, thereby making their theories less complete. We end by considering deeper controversies in the literature that seem open both to new conceptualization and further empirical research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The problem of sense making is particularly acute when established organizations face a sudden set of changes in their fields. This article offers some conceptual clarification of this issue in several ways in the context of profit-making firms. In these circumstances, managers need to worry about not just competitors but also governments, suppliers, and workers. Because of these complex interdependencies, the process of sense making is accompanied by a search process that may lead managers in directions that are a priori unpredictable. New sets of understandings about how to survive in a market often reflect political compromises between actors that create new cultural conceptions of action. Managers have to sometimes take what systems give in order instead of what they might prefer. The author illustrates these principles in the case of the reorganization of the European defense industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article comments on the paper by Frank Dobbin and Dirk Zorkin entitled "Corporate Malfeasance and the Myth of Shareholder Value," focusing on the argument that the era of the shareholder value has now come to a close in the United States. The author claims that the methods and practices of financial engineering used by Dobbin and Zorkin have reached an endpoint in the ability to make corporations more profitable. He also argues that the financial scandals of the early 1980s show the limits of these tactics. Lastly, the author concludes about the future of the American economy.

As institutions and governance structures develop in modern markets, they tend to “feed back” onto economic activity. Through such feedback loops, market and political arenas can develop symbiotically into relatively coherent “fields” that gradually embed actors' orientations and activities. Using these insights, this article develops and tests a theory of European integration focusing on the case of the European Community, the first pillar of the European Union. Traders, organized interests, courts, and the EC's policy-making organs, over time, have produced a self-sustaining causal system that has driven the construction of the European market and polity. The generality of this explanation to a sociology of markets and polity-building projects is discussed in the conclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The past 15 years have witnessed a steep growth in world trade. Almost half of that growth is due to the increased integration of the European economies, The European Union's (EU) decisions to complete the single market and move towards a common currency have created a single set of rules governing economic activity in Europe. We argue that these changes imply a process of ‘Europeanization’ of Europe's economies. As a result, the largest European corporations have increasingly focused their investments across Europe and worked to gain market share within the EU. Our results imply that at least part of what we call globalization is the result of states' deciding to build rules for market integration in Europe. States continue to play an essential role in market building. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The past 15 years have witnessed a steep growth in world trade. Almost half of that growth is due to the increased integration of the European economies, The European Union's (EU) decisions to complete the single market and move towards a common currency have created a single set of rules governing economic activity in Europe. We argue that these changes imply a process of 'Europeanization' of Europe's economies. As a result, the largest European corporations have increasingly focused their investments across Europe and worked to gain market share within the EU. Our results imply that at least part of what we call globalization is the result of states' deciding to build rules for market integration in Europe. States continue to play an essential role in market building. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Explaining the emergence of the European Union's Single Market Program requires making sense of how that institutional project came on to the political agenda. This article uses insights from historical and organizational institutional theories to supplement intergovernmentalist and neofunctionalist accounts of the Single Market Program. The European Union was facing a political crisis in the early 1980s caused by an inability of states to find a set of institutional arrangements that were in their collective interest. This crisis enabled the European Commission to act as an institutional entrepreneur in several ways. They produced the Single Market Program as a project, helped build a political coalition to support its basic tenets, and ultimately reorganized the preferences of state actors. The power of the cultural frame approach is that it helps explain how institutional reform and monetary union - projects that were rejected by the states in 1983 - came to be accepted over the decade of the 1980s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The problem of the relationship between actors and the social structures in which they are embedded is central to sociological theory. This paper suggests that the "new institutionalist" focus on fields, domains, or games provides an alternative view of how to think about this problem by focusing on the construction of local orders. This paper criticizes the conception of actors in both rational choice and sociological versions of these theories. A more sociological view of action, what is called "social skill," is developed. The idea of social skill originates in symbolic interactionism and is defined as the ability to induce cooperation in others. This idea is elaborated to suggest how actors are important to the construction and reproduction of local orders. I show how its elements already inform existing work. Finally, I show how the idea can sensitize scholars to the role of actors in empirical work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The migration of blacks and whites from the South since 1930 has been traditionally characterized as resulting from the mechanization of agriculture. It is argued in this article that the real cause of the migration must be situated in the crisis in cotton farming during the Depression of the 1930s. Large farm owners secured aid from the federal government in the form of agricultural subsidy payments. In response to this program, they reduced their cotton acreage, bought tractors, and displaced their tenants. This transformation drastically reduced the need for tenant labor and brought about the large-scale migrations. Regression analyses of relevant data confirm this interpretation. The major conclusion is that migrations will be shaped by social, economic, and political relations that require unique historical understanding. Further, migrations will tend to reflect conditions at the point of origin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT To carry out policy aimed at achieving sexual equality in labor market positions, we need a clear understanding of what constitutes comparable positions in the work setting. In this paper we expand on what is normally examined when determining whether persons or groups have similar positions in the workplace. We argue that power in the work setting is an essential aspect of stratification and is helpful in the study of sexual inequality in labor market positions. Our empirical analysis offers confirmation for these arguments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of this article is to construct a theoretical framework for the study of income determination that incorporates elements of three major approaches we characterize as status attainment, human capital, and structural approaches. These three approaches are briefly reviewed and criticized. The framework is introduced through the theoretical concepts of the social relations of production and exchange, the socio-technical relations of production, and individual characteristics. Hypotheses are introduced and data and measures are generated to test them. In general, the model and its measures perform promisingly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I use the metaphor "markets as politics" to create a sociological view of action in markets. I develop a conceptual view of the social institutions that comprise markets, discuss a sociological model of action in which market participants try to create stable worlds and find social solutions to competition, and discuss how markets and states are intimately linked. From these foundations, I generate propositions about how politics in markets work during various stages of market development--formation, stability, and transformation. At the formation of markets, when actors in firms are trying to create a status hierarchy that enforces noncompetitive forms of competition, political action resembles social movements. In stable markets, incumbent firms defend their positions against challengers and invaders. During periods of market transformation, invaders can reintroduce more fluid social-movement-like conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article comments on an article by Palmer, Barber, Zhou and Soysal on acquisitions of large U.S. corporations in the 1960s. Managers and owners of firms try to avoid becoming targets of merger, and a firm facing a hostile bid often looks for a friendly merger. The factors that make a firm an attractive target for a merger will force the firm to choose between wanted and unwanted suitors. There is some evidence that managers in networked firms were more likely to be targets of friendly takeovers. Managers used their connections to find a more acceptable suitor, one that might allow them to maintain control of the firm or that would pay them off with golden parachutes. This is a weak result in that it indicates some social organization of firms through networks, but not a strong enough organization to prevent a takeover. This result is ambiguous in that it is unclear who benefits from the network. Firms with concentrated ownership were able to prevent takeovers, whether hostile or friendly. But this is one prerogative of being an owner and has little to do with interlocking directorates or a unified capitalist elite. The predators were owners and managers who applied what I have called the finance conception of the firm. The finance conception of control reflects a cultural understanding about what a firm is. This conception began to be put forward by financial executives in the 1950s who evaluated their businesses primarily on the basis of financial criteria. But this conception is not limited to firms with financial executives.

Choosing a president in an organization is an important political decision that reflects who controls the organization and the bases for that control. In this paper, a model of power based on resources in the organization and the environment is spec(fled in order to understand how power shifted between intraorganizational units in the 1(X) largest U.S. finns between 1919 and 1979. Early in the century, large finns were controlled by entrepreneurs or personnel who came up through manufacturing. In the middle decades, sales and marketing personnel controlled large finns. In the past 25 years, finance personnel have become increasingly dominant. These shifts resulted from changes in the strategy and structure of the organizations, changes in antitrust laws that promoted an increase in products-related and unrelated mergers in the postwar era, and the mimicking of firms in similar environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]