Innovation and Growth in Corporate Restructurings: Solution or Contradiction

ISBN-13: 9783834916235 / Angielski / Miękka / 2009 / 284 str.

Achim Schmitt

Opis

Organizational decline and corporate turnarounds are historically at the height of interest, both theoretically as well as with regard to current practice. Characterized as the opposite of successful adaptation, organizational decline is the failure to anticipate, avoid, neutralize, and adapt to external or internal pressures, thus triggering a process of decreasing organizational resources over a specific period of time that might, but not necessarily needs to, end in corporate failure. Turnaround management is intuitively related to efficiency seeking, co- cutting, streamlining processes, simplifying structures, etc., etc. The questioning of a simple, one-sided view of cost management and short-term survival is already a challenging task. To associate exploitation and exploration with a successful long-term-oriented turnaround and to empirically search for it in the turnaround world is a truly exceptional endeavor, an interesting topic as such, and a creative and exciting perspective. Achim Schmitt does not only have personal experience with restructuring, but he has for many years done very interesting research into the field of corporate restructuring and behavior in respect of organizational decline. His dissertation project analyzed organizations' reactions to situations of organizational decline. The results of his work revealed how organizations manage to avoid bankruptcy, while simultaneously achieving sustainable growth for corporate survival. Besides providing insights into how restructurings are carried out in practice, the strength of this book lies in the integration of multiple research streams and the results of a larger empirical study.

Spis treści

Organizational change and development, notions of organizational decline, corporate restructuring, a comprehensive process model of corporate restructuring

O autorze

Dr. Achim Schmitt promovierte bei Prof. Dr. Gilbert Probst am Lehrstuhl für Organisation und Management der University of Geneva. Er ist aktuell als Gastwissenschaftler an der Columbia Business School in New York tätig.

Blurb

Phases of growth and decline are part of every organizational life and are, therefore, constantly represented in the management literature. Companies anticipating or facing downturns often react with restructuring activities in order to reverse the declining business situation in the long term.

Achim Schmitt examines the role of efficiency and growth through innovation within corporate restructuring efforts. He develops a restructuring model which deals with factors mediating (sources of organizational decline) and moderating (level of organizational slack) the relationship between restructuring activities and overall restructuring performance. The author tests the model empirically in the German-speaking consulting market for corporate restructurings. He, thereby, provides a state-of-the-art view of the factors and activities underlying successful corporate restructuring efforts.