Article S8.9 Analysing Cases on Business Turnaround Strategies Seminar Leader: Githa S. Heggde Prin. L. N. Welingkar Institute of Management Development and Research, Bangalore, India githa.heggde[@]welingkar.org This seminar was based on Heggde’s study on business underperformance and turnaround strategies (Heggde, 2010; Heggde & Panickar, 2010). The study aimed at understanding the internal and external causes of organisational sickness (i.e., chronic underperformance), and the strategies adopted by public and private sector organisations in India to improve business performance. Analysis of published case studies indicated several internal and external causes of organisational sickness, for example: (a) internal causes: over-expansion, project cost escalation, slow initial growth, poor marketing, and management weakness, and (b) external causes: rise in input costs, global competition, economic recession, and government regulation. These sources also reported on a variety of turnaround strategies deployed to improve business performance, such as strategies related to marketing, human resource, finance, operations, and other areas of organisational functioning. Sixty-six published turnaround cases pertaining to the period 1998-2009 were considered. These were Indian business organisations which had successfully deployed turnaround strategies. Out of these, 22 were public-sectors organisations and 44 were private-sector organisations. A statistical description of these cases was attempted. The data collected for the study were dichotomous in nature--for each organisation, the data indicated either the presence or absence of specific internal and external causes of sickness and also the presence or absence of specific turnaround strategies. Different measures of association were used, such as Chi Square (÷2), Yule’s Q, and Yule’s Phi (ö). Further, cumulative frequency was also used to identify prominently cited causes of sickness and turnaround strategies for different categories of organisations. Various challenges were faced in this study. Most of the turnaround literature focused on successful cases; data on turnaround failures were rare. The cases were often far from comprehensive; they lacked exhaustive listing of causes and strategies. Hence it was essential to verify the information through directors’ reports, auditors’ reports, company news, and other sources. Classifying the causes of sickness into internal and external was also a challenge because sometimes the external causes had a bearing on the internal causes. In specific cases, narrowing down on specific causes was a great challenge. Further, comparison between public and private sector organisations was difficult as they both operated in different environments. Fixing the timeframe of the study was a problem because of the presence of recession years, such as 1999 and 2008. These recession years led to a confusion regarding which block of years should provide a more accurate trend with regard to the association between causes of sickness and specific turnaround strategies. Despite these challenges, the statistical study showed an association between firm category and the causes cited for its sickness. The study identified the more commonly cited internal and external causes of sickness in public and private businesses. It also identified the more commonly cited turnaround strategies. The study provides a useful summary of the turnaround experiences reported in the Indian business environment. As such, it may serve as a helpful guide for business decision makers. Reference Heggde, G .S. (2010). Research on analyzing the causes of sickness and turnaround strategies at public and private organizations.Unpublished manuscript. Heggde, G .S., & Panickar, S. (2010). Comparative analysis on causes of sickness and turnaround strategies at public and private organisations. In D. Vrontis, Y. Weber, R. Kaufmann, & S. Tarba (Eds.), Business development across countries and cultures (Proceedings of the 3rd annual conference of the EuroMed Academy of Business, Nicosia, Cyprus, November 2010, pp. 507-525). EuroMed Press. Retrieved January 30, 2011, from http://www.unic.ac.cy/media/business-school/2010/EuroMed3-Business-Developments-Across-Countries-And-Cultures.pdf [File size: 10.5 MB] Reported by Swati Panda and Githa S. Heggde; edited by D. P. Dash. [January 30, 2011] Copyleft Xavier Institute of Management, Xavier Square, Bhubaneswar 751013, India Research World (ISSN 0974-2379) http://www1.ximb.ac.in/RW.nsf/pages/Home | ||
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