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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship of financial ratios and non-financial factors of successful and failed corporations in the USA. Specifically, the authors provide evidence on whether financial ratios and non-financial factors can be jointly included as indicators to improve the predictive capacity of organisational success or failure in different countries and sectors.

The paper utilises a mixed method exploratory case study focussing on listed corporations in the US and Australian manufacturing, agriculture, finance and property sectors.

The financial ratio findings demonstrate that (with the exception of the failed Australian manufacturing sector) the integrated multi-measure (IMM) ratio approach consistently provides a higher classification rate for the failed and successful groups than those provided by an individual measure. In all cases the IMM method scored higher for US companies (with the exception of the failed Australian property sector). The findings also show that irrespective of the country location or sector, non-financial factors such as board composition and managements’ involvement in organisational strategy impact on a corporation’s success or failure.

The findings reveal that non-financial factors occur prior to financial ratios when attempting to predict organisational success or failure and the IMM approach enables a more thorough examination of the predictive ability of financial ratios for US and Australian organisations. This intuitively indicates that when combined with financial ratios, non-financial factors may be a useful predictor of corporate success or failure across countries and sectors.

Sound internal processes and the identification of both financial ratios and non-financial factors can be utilised to improve the reliability of financial failure models, enable corrective and preventative steps to be implemented by management and potentially reduce the costs of failure for US and Australian organisations.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship of non-financial and financial factors to firm survival, provide evidence of factors related to financial success and distress for prominent Australian agricultural firms, and improve the predictive capacity of financial failure models.

The paper utilizes mixed method exploratory case studies across four Australian agricultural firms (two successful and two failed) listed on the Australian Securities Exchange.

The authors found that the use of an Integrated Multi-Measured approach provided a higher classification rate for the failed group than those provided by an individual measure. We also discovered that non-financial factors associated with the agricultural organizations studied impacted their success or failure. These factors included managements’ involvement in organizational strategy and the composition of the board of directors. It was also apparent that management decision-making approaches may become frozen, or at best restricted, in the face of impending failure, dependent upon the stress level within the organization and the management skill base.

The cases studied indicated that non-financial factors of failure occurred prior to any financial predictors, intuitively indicating a relationship between non-financial and financial factors in Australian agricultural firms.

The identification of financial and non-financial factors and sound internal processes which distinguish successful and failing firms can be utilized for the development of an early warning predictor of organizational success or failure.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the non-financial causes of organizational success or failure, provide a better understanding of the symptoms of financial distress and improve the predictive capacity of financial failure models.

The paper utilizes exploratory case studies in investigating the relationship of non-financial factors to organizational success or failure across a sample of sector-specific Australian firms listed on the Australian Stock Exchange. A two-tailed study was designed, in which seven cases from both extremes were chosen from three Australian business sectors: finance, property and manufacturing.

Non-financial factors associated with the organizations studied impacted their success or failure. These factors included management skill, experience and involvement in organizational strategy, feedback and resultant activity, together with board of director composition. The identification of financial and non-financial factors and sound internal processes could be utilized for the development of an early warning predictor of organizational success or failure.

The use of this method is very time-consuming but is highly valuable in case study research, providing a more in-depth understanding of how non-financial factors impact organizational success or failure.

The research will provide a better understanding of the symptoms of financial distress and improve the predictive capacity of financial failure models. The improvement in prediction of organizational failure will reduce the costs of failure to all areas affected, from the large corporation to the small business. The inter-connectivity of all businesses to each other often results in a knock-on effect of failure with the cost being borne by all members of the community in some manner. The level of social impact and cost of failure can only be seen by the enormous costs of the Global Financial Crisis failures.

This paper contributes to the literature on effective qualitative research and explores important areas of consideration for those conducting qualitative multiple-case studies. It is intended to be of use to researchers investigating the area of predictors of organizational failure or success.

This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

Using financial and non-financial indicators in combination represents the most effective approach to identifying emerging problems within companies.

The briefing saves busy executives, strategists and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.

Describes the background to publishing in Scotland and outlines the nature and range of current Scottish publishing houses. Sets Scottish publishing within its UK and European context and indicates a number of major trends. Presents broad statistics of current Scottish publishing. Describes the nature, activities and achievements of 30 Scottish publishing houses, from large to small and from general to specialist.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the development and evaluation of CanSpeak which is an open-source speech interface for users with dysarthria of speech. The interface can be customized by each user to map a small number of words they can speak clearly to commands in the computer system, thereby adding a new modality to their interaction.

The interface was developed in two phases: in the first phase, the authors used participatory design to engage the users and their community in the customization of the system, and in the second phase, we used a more focussed co-design methodology during which a user of the system became a co-designer by directly making new design decisions about the system.

The study showed that it is important to include assistive technology users and their community in the design and customization of technology. Participation led to increased engagement, adoption and also provided new ideas that were rooted in the experience of the user.

The co-design phase of the project provided an opportunity for the researchers to work closely with a user of their system and include her in design decisions. The study showed that by employing co-design new insights into the design domain can be revealed and incorporated into the design that might not be revealed otherwise.