In a series of papers, Milgrom studied the problem of lobbying and politicking, or "influence activities" that occur in large organizations. These papers considered models in which employees are affected by post-hiring decisions. When managers have discretion over these decisions, employees have incentives to spend time attempting to influence the outcomes. Since this time could instead be spent on productive tasks, influence activities are costly for the firm. Milgrom shows that firms may limit the discretion of managers in order to avoid these costs (Milgrom, 1988). In a paper with John Roberts, Milgrom also studied a model in which employees have information that is valuable to the decision maker. As a result, allowing some degree of influence is beneficial, but excessive influence is costly. Milgrom and Roberts compare various strategies that firms might use to discourage excessive influence activities, and they show that typically, limiting employees' access to decision makers and altering decision-making criteria are preferable to the use of explicit financial incentives (Milgrom and Roberts, 1988). In another paper, with Margaret Meyer and Roberts (1992), Milgrom studied the influence costs that arise in multiunit firms. They demonstrate that managers of underperforming units have incentives to exaggerate the prospects of their unit in order to protect their jobs. If the unit were embedded in a firm whose other units were more closely related, there would be a lower threat of layoffs, because reassignment of workers could occur instead. Similarly, if the unit were independent, there would many fewer opportunities to misrepresent its prospects. These arguments help explain why divestitures of underperforming units occur so frequently and why, when such units do not become stand-alone firms, they are often purchased by buyers operating in related lines of business.