In the decisions made by chaebol groups to select affiliates for restructuring during the Asian economic crisis, characteristics related to the overall group's financial difficulties and group-affiliate relationships had a more significant influence than the characteristics of individual affiliates. The tendency for groups to restructure affiliates in order to refocus their business scope on core industries was more pronounced as the degree of financial difficulty experienced by the group increased, whereas the tendency to restructure financially distressed affiliates did not show such a significant relationship with the group's financial difficulties. These findings suggest that chaebol restructuring was conducted from the perspective of the group as a whole rather than individual affiliates, and that fundamental organizational changes such as adjusting the scope of businesses operated by the group were pursued more aggressively when the group faced a severe crisis. Meanwhile, the likelihood that a crisis faced by the group would lead to fundamental organizational changes such as refocusing business scope tended to decrease as the group's history was longer. These results are comprehensively consistent with the explanations of the punctuated equilibrium model of organizational change.