ABSTRACT
Corporate turnarounds have been studied extensively by academic researchers, executives, and consultants for over forty years (see Bibeault, 1982 and Schendel et al., 1976 for early works). Whereas a collective knowledge base regarding turnarounds has emerged over that period of time and has been cataloged in reviews (e.g., Lohrke et al., 2004; Trahms et al., 2013), the management field’s understanding of turnarounds could hardly be called mature and probably more theoretical propositions remain unstated or untested about turnarounds than commonly accepted knowledge exists. Indeed, a recent review of the turnaround literature described it as ‘fragmented’ in both its theoretical development and empirical methods (Trahms et al., 2013, p. 1278). Thus studies do not accumulate by testing the same theoretical constructs and using similar measures and definitions across various samples of firms or organizations.
