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A neglected area of research in ODC is the turnaround of poorly performing firms such as those under bankruptcy protection. We researched 142 companies that attempted reorganization under bankruptcy protection between 1983 and 2003. Firms deployed one or more of four distinct strategies to turnaround: rationalizing existing resources, developing existing resources, generating new resources, and investing in future resources. Firms that generated new resources, and developed and rationalized existing resources, had the highest probability of emergence. Interestingly firms that sustained their turnaround post-emergence invested in future resources in addition to generating, developing, and rationalizing resources. Implications for ODC are discussed.

The lack of systematic methods for reducing the complex reality has hampered many of the contributions that processual research might have produced. This paper presents a methodology for processual strategy research that offers a systematic approach for causal explanation across complex sequences of events and enables theorization about underlying causal mechanisms driving the processes. In addition, a comparative analysis of two organizational decline and turnaround processes is presented in order to illuminate how the methodology is able to generate a substantial advancement in knowledge by indicating the causal mechanisms underlying the decline and turnaround processes. The findings show that the turnaround is produced by four causal mechanisms that cumulatively and interdependently work against the mechanism of decline.

The continued move toward high-stakes accountability has significant consequences for public schools located within communities occupied by historically marginalized populations, as the majority of chronically low-performing (CLP) schools are housed within metropolitan areas where students of color are the primary population (Noguera & Wells, 2011). Consequently, over the course of the last decade, college- and university-based educational leadership preparation programs have been placed on the defensive (Cibulka, 2009; Goldring & Schuermann, 2009), as school leaders and those who prepare them are being increasingly held accountable for the significant escalation in the number of CLP schools. With such issues as the contextual backdrop, the purpose of this chapter is to further examine two issues critical to the field of educational leadership preparation: the need for leadership preparation programs to develop and provide curricula and pedagogical offerings that better prepare leaders to serve within diverse communities, and the potentiality of using Q-methodology as an evaluative instrument in the reformation efforts of educational leadership preparation programs attempting to better equip school leaders for diverse contexts.

The study here responds to the view that the crucial problem in strategic management (research) is firm heterogeneity – why firms adopt different strategies and structures, why heterogeneity persists, and why competitors perform differently. The present study applies complexity theory tenets and a “neo-configurational perspective” of Misangyi et al. (2016) in proposing complex antecedent conditions affecting complex outcome conditions. Rather than examining variable directional relationships using null hypotheses statistical tests, the study examines case-based conditions using somewhat precise outcome tests (SPOT). The complex outcome conditions include firms with high financial performances in declining markets and firms with low financial performances in growing markets – the study focuses on seemingly paradoxical outcomes. The study here examines firm strategies and outcomes for separate samples of cross-sectional data of manufacturing firms with headquarters in one of two nations: Finland (n = 820) and Hungary (n = 300). The study includes examining the predictive validities of the models. The study contributes conceptual advances of complex firm orientation configurations and complex firm performance capabilities configurations as mediating conditions between firmographics, firm resources, and the two final complex outcome conditions (high performance in declining markets and low performance in growing markets). The study contributes by showing how fuzzy-logic computing with words (Zadeh, 1966) advances strategic management research toward achieving requisite variety to overcome the theory-analytic mismatch pervasive currently in the discipline (Fiss, 2007, 2011) – thus, this study is a useful step toward solving the crucial problem of how to explain firm heterogeneity.

Few industries may be better suited to study the effects of financial distress on managerial decision making than the airline industry. Economic recessions, natural catastrophes, and terrorist attacks are just some of the factors that frequently take a particularly heavy toll on the airline industry. Thus, coping with and overcoming financial distress is a critical aspect of airline management.

This chapter explores the role of contract breaches in firm turnarounds. Drawing from the turnaround and contract literatures, this chapter proposes that implicit and explicit contract breaches provide substantial resources to firms in turnaround situations during their retrenchment phase. It is asserted that the turnover of top management, the threat of bankruptcy, and the severe time compression of the turnaround situation will facilitate contract breaches. These contract breaches will, however, cripple the firm's ability to accomplish the goals of the reorientation phase, particularly if they choose to pursue a “return to growth” strategy. To avoid these crippling effects, it is proposed that the management of the firm will utilize the uncertainty inherent to the turnaround situation to provide accounts of why the contract breaches were necessary. Through these accounts, management will lower the perceived losses of the violated parties and will maintain their commitment during the firm's reorientation phase.