Mind mapping the knowledge structure of the corporate turnaround topic

Mind mapping the knowledge structure of the corporate turnaround topic

Joseph Kim-keung Ho

Independent Trainer

Hong Kong, China

Abstract: The topic of corporate turnaround has long been a main one in the field of Business Management. This article makes use of the mind mapping-based literature review (MMBLR) approach to render an image on the knowledge structure of corporate turnaround. The finding of the review exercise is that its knowledge structure comprises five themes, i.e., (a) definitions and mechanisms, (b) the turnaround process and its sub-processes, (c) specific and situational considerations, (d) main actors involved and, finally, (e) research issues and topics. The article offers some academic and pedagogical values on the topics of corporate turnaround, literature review and the mind mapping-based literature review (MMBLR) approach.

Key words: Corporate turnaround, literature review, mind map, the mind mapping-based literature review (MMBLR) approach

Please cite the article as: Ho, J.K.K. 2016. “Mind mapping the knowledge structure of the corporate turnaround topic” Joseph KK Ho e-resources blog October 16 (url address: http://josephho33.blogspot.hk/2016/10/mind-mapping-knowledge-structure-of.html)

1.     Introduction

The topic of corporate turnaround has been a main one in the field of Business Management. It is of academic and pedagogical interest to the writer who has been a lecturer in the Business Management field. In this article, the writer presents his literature review findings on corporate turnaround using the mind mapping-based literature review (MMBLR) approach. This approach was proposed by this writer this year and has been employed to review the literature on a number of topics, such as supply chain management, strategic management accounting and customer relationship management (Ho, 2016). The MMBLR approach itself is not particularly novel since mind mapping has been employed in literature review since its inception. The overall aims of this exercise are to:

1.      Render an image of the knowledge structure of corporate turnaround via the application of the MMBLR approach;

2.      Illustrate how the MMBLR approach can be applied in literature review on an academic topic, such as corporate turnaround.

The findings from this literature review exercise offer academic and pedagogical values to those who are interested in the topics of corporate turnaround, literature review and the MMBLR approach. Other than that, this exercise facilitates this writer’s intellectual learning on these three topics. The next section makes a brief introduction on the MMBLR approach. After that, an account of how it is applied to study corporate turnaround is presented.

2.     Steps involved in the mind mapping-based literature review

The mind mapping-based literature review (MMBLR) approach was developed by this writer this year (Ho, 2016). It makes use of mind mapping as a complementary literature review exercise (see the Literature on mind mapping Facebook page and the Literature on literature review Facebook page). The approach is made up of two steps. Step 1 is a thematic analysis on the literature of the topic chosen for study. Step 2 makes use of the findings from step 1 to produce a complementary mind map. The MMBLR approach is a relatively straightforward and brief exercise. The approach is not particularly original since the idea of using mind maps in literature review has been well recognized in the mind mapping literature. IThe MMBLR approach is also an interpretive exercise in the sense that different reviewers with different research interest and intellectual background inevitably will select different ideas, facts and findings in their thematic analysis (i.e., step 1 of the MMBLR approach). Also, to conduct the approach, the reviewer needs to perform a literature search beforehand. Apparently, what a reviewer gathers from a literature search depends on what library facility, including e-library, is available to the reviewer. The next section presents the findings from the MMBLR approach step 1; afterward, a companion mind map is provided based on the MMBLR approach step 1 findings.

3.     A thematic analysis on the corporate turnaround literature

Step 1of the MMBLR approach is a thematic analysis on the literature of the topic under investigation (Ho, 2016). In our case, this is the corporate turnaround topic. The writer gathers some academic articles from some universities’ e-libraries as well as via the Google Scholar. With the academic articles collected, the writer conducted a literature review on them to assemble a set of ideas, viewpoints, concepts and findings (called points here). These points from the corporate turnaround literature are then grouped into four themes here, also see Exhibit 1 which shows how coding is done on the list of points identified from the literature for theme grouping purpose.

Exhibit 1: Coding on the list of points on corporate turnaround for theme grouping

In this analysis, two of the themes, namely, “Definitions of key concepts and their underlying mechanisms at work” (theme 1) and “Specific and situational considerations involved in corporate turnaround” (theme 3), are further divided into sub-themes. The thematic analysis findings on corporate turnaround are as follows:

Theme 1: Definitions of key concepts and their underlying mechanisms at work

Theme 1.1: On turnaround

Point 1.1.              “…By turnaround, in turn, we mean the recovery of a firm’s economic performance following an existence-threatening decline” (Lamberg and Pajunen, 2005);

Point 1.2.              “What is involved in turning a business around? Spotting the problem is the first task in any turnaround. … Surviving the crisis is the second … Putting together a plan is the third requirement … And finally doing it is the crucial task” (Blayney, 2005);

Theme 1.2: On business failure

Point 1.3.              “..fundamentally businesses fail when they run out of cash” (Blayney, 2005);

Point 1.4.              “…because failure involves the alignment or misalignment of the organization and its environment, it is, by definition, about strategy” (Sheppard and Chowdhury, 2005);

Point 1.5.              “..failure [organizational failure] is not typically the fault of either the environment or the organization, but rather it must be attributed to both of these forces, or to be more exact, failure is the misalignment of the organization to the environment’s realities” (Sheppard and Chowdhury, 2005);

Theme 1.3: On organizational downturn and decline

Point 1.6.              “Schendel et al. (1976) [Schendel and Patton, 1976] … distinguish between downturns that resulted from poor strategy and downturns that resulted from poor operations or poor implementation of an otherwise sound strategy. They found that while a substantial proportion of declines were due to ‘efficiency’ reasons, turnarounds were more frequently associated with ‘strategic’ moves…” (Robbins and Pearce II, 1992);

Point 1.7.              “…by organizational decline we refer to deterioration in an organization's adaptation to its microniche and the associated reduction in resources within the organization..” (Lamberg and Pajunen, 2005);

Point 1.8.              “Organizations that try to adopt safer domain and carve a congenial niche are not able to respond to sudden changes in the environment, leading to decline” (Maheshwari, 2000);

Point 1.9.              “Excessive initiative beyond the firms' technical and financial capacity to alter the product market domain has also been the cause of decline for many firms” (Maheshwari, 2000);

Theme 1.4: On retrenchment

Point 1.10.         “Retrenchment consists of cost cutting and, if essential, asset reductions. The primary objective of retrenchment is to stabilize the firm's financial condition, which is fundamental to successful turnaround” (Pearce II and Robbins, 2008);

Point 1.11.         “There is a growing evidence to suggest that a basic set of activities are prevalent among successful turnaround firms, especially those in mature manufacturing industries… Referring to as ‘structuring,’ ‘downsizing,’ and ‘downscoping,’ these activities are best known as retrenchment, a term that denotes a strong emphasis by the firm on cost and asset reductions as a means to mitigate the conditions responsible for financial downturn” (Robbins and Pearce II, 1992);

Theme 1.5: On recovery and restructuring

Point 1.12.         “.. There are three primary forms of corporate restructuring: portfolio, financial, and organizational (Bowman & Singh, 1993). Portfolio restructuring involves a radical change in the mix of businesses …., or in the mix of products and services… Financial restructuring involves changes in the firm's capital, ownership, or governance. … Organizational restructuring includes the retrenchment activities of downsizing and plant closings, delayering, outsourcing, and departmental and divisional reconfiguration” (Pearce II and Robbins, 2008);

Point 1.13.         “Recovery activities refer to strategic changes that transform and reposition the firm for sustained growth and profitability (Barker and Duhaime, 1997). These activities include market penetration, product launch, market entry, acquisitions, and structural change (Bibeault, 1982; Robbins and Pearce, 1992)..” (Morrow, Johnson and Busenitz, 2004);

Theme 2: The corporate turnaround process and sub-processes involved

Point 2.1.               “.... most failures follow what has come to be known as the business decline curve where a business that is underperforming, starts to become distressed and as the decline steepens, falls into crisis and eventual failure…” (Blayney, 2005);

Point 2.2.              “What happens in a turnaround?  The turnaround curve divides into a number of distinct phases. The early days of any turnaround are generally an exercise in crisis management..…Once the bleeding has been stopped, sound foundations need to be laid for the subsequent successful regrowth of the company. This often involves a period of ‘stabilisation’ … The final phase …is in the regrowth of the business and its value in accordance with the plan” (Blayney, 2005);

Point 2.3.              “While the literature does not provide a generally accepted conceptualization of the turnaround process, the different models share a common idea: firms engage in retrenchment and recovery activities during the turnaround process (Lohrke et al., 2012; Robbins and Pearce, 1992).

Point 2.4.              “…empirical research identified a pattern to the turnaround process: Firms experience declining performance due to a variety of managerial and environmental causes including economic recessions, technological obsolescence, infrastructure and operational inefficiencies, and other deterioration of competitive advantages. These causal factors lead to performance declines that place the firm in a turnaround situation that warrants a two-tiered strategic response, labeled the turnaround strategy. Managers attempt to recover their pre-decline performance levels with an initial retrenchment phase, followed by a longer-term recovery phase” (Pearce II and Robbins, 2008);

Point 2.5.              “Grinyer et al. [1988] found that decline must reach some critical threshold before organizations significantly alter their patterns of strategic activities..” (Robbins and Pearce II, 1992);

Point 2.6.              “Following retrenchment, the firm's plan for recovery was conceptualized as falling along a continuum (Pearce II and Robbins, 1994). At one end of the continuum are recovery responses that express a near-term commitment to operating in a reduced size or scope. At the other extreme, executives undertake an entrepreneurial redesign of their firm's strategy given its changed resource profile. Firms that attribute their turnaround situations to internal causes are likely to choose to continue in the downscaled mode, while executives who face external problems are more inclined to change their strategy” (Pearce II and Robbins, 2008);

Point 2.7.              “For a declining firm, stabilizing its operations and restoring profitability usually entails strict cost reduction followed by a shrinking back to those segments of the business that have the best prospects of attractive profit margins (Byerly et al., 2003)..” (Pearce II and Robbins, 2008);

Point 2.8.              “..A strategic transformation is required when managers' predictions and expectations about future markets, products/services, and technologies differ from the status quo so significantly that a radical re-scoping of the firm's strategy and capabilities is required” (Pearce II and Robbins, 2008);

Theme 3: Specific and situational considerations involved in corporate turnaround

Theme 3.1: Situational considerations

Point 3.1.              “….independent organizations are more resourceful in coping with sudden environmental changes, particularly in the use of financial slack and assets, than subsidiary organizations, despite the subsidiary’s greater access to resources from the parent company” (Trahms, Ndofor and Sirmon, 2013);

Point 3.2.              “..in organizations with strong culture, the chances of organizational death are generally less as such organizations normally enjoy support of many funding sources and realize greater financial and resource support from both internal and external constituents (D'Annuo et al., 1991)…” (Maheshwari, 2000);

Point 3.3.              “….successful turnarounds are characterized by high levels of board and organizational diversity (Filatotchev & Toms, 2003)” (Trahms, Ndofor and Sirmon, 2013);

Point 3.4.              “In developing economies where unemployment rate is high, even declining government-owned organizations are required to continue their operations. Hence, such organizations are more prone to inaction and turnaround as against dissolution” (Maheshwari, 2000);

Point 3.5.              “For diversified corporations, retrenchment may be enough to achieve stability in a single SBU [strategic business unit], which may satisfy the expectation of executives for its revival if the unit is not required to be independently profitable (Morrow et al., 2007)..” (Pearce II and Robbins, 2008);

Point 3.6.              “In the West a number of actions are commonly recognized as crucial to firms turnaround…..1. The problem with the firm’s performance must first be recognized….2. The firm must retrench or somehow seek to stop the bleeding of cash flow ….3. The firm needs to pursue efforts to turn the firm around consistent with the nature of the principal problems facing it….4. It is not uncommon that in the U.S. the CEO of a troubled firm will also be replaced…..5. Finally, the sooner the firm recognizes the decline, the sooner the turnaround effort will begin, and the greater likelihood of a successful turnaround effort” (Bruton, Ahlstrom and Wan, 2001);

Theme 3.2: Other specific considerations

Point 3.7.               “After two fundamental economic crises in recent years, corporate turnaround has become a common phenomenon in managerial practice” (Schmitt and Raisch, 2013);

Point 3.8.              “The cost of transaction with the environmental components increases under declining conditions. Suppliers, creditors, customers, and other organizational audience try to disengage themselves from the organization, reduce the quality of participation, …. (Sutton and Callahan, 1987)..” (Maheshwari, 2000);

Point 3.9.               “..Although achieving financial stabilization is an essential first objective of the turnaround process, stability signals only that the company's decline in performance has abated, not that a foundation for profitability exists. Planners need to decide if the company's long-term prospects are best served by continuing to implement its existent strategy with its reduced resources, or if the reactive changes made during the decline signal the need for a dramatic change in direction..” (Pearce II and Robbins, 2008);

Point 3.10.          “….Piecemeal, incremental, cost-only retrenchment is seldom sufficient to achieve the financial stability necessary for turnaround (Poon, Newbould, & Durtschi, 2001)…” (Pearce II and Robbins, 2008);

Point 3.11.          “…firms that engage in retrenchment actions experience reductions in industry- and firm-specific human capital as well as industry-specific social capital that increase the probability of firm failure (Pennings, Lee, & van Witteloostuijn, 1998)…” (Trahms, Ndofor and Sirmon, 2013);

Point 3.12.         “…restructuring announcements are usually a strong signal that there are significant troubles within the company that jeopardize its financial future” (Pearce II and Robbins, 2008);

Point 3.13.         “Barker and Mone (1994) argued that retrenchment is not always indispensable to the turnaround process, while Arogyaswamy et al. (1995) suggested that turnaround is not always sequential, beginning with retrenchment and followed by strategic recovery actions” (Trahms, Ndofor and Sirmon, 2013);

Point 3.14.          “…managerial cognition, accounts for how the top management team (TMT) perceives and interprets the factors that cause decline; as such, it forms the interface between causes of organizational decline and the actions organizations take to reverse it” (Trahms, Ndofor and Sirmon, 2013);

Point 3.15.         “…the outcome of the turnaround is not guaranteed but instead could range from failure to significant performance gains” (Trahms, Ndofor and Sirmon, 2013);

Point 3.16.         “Broadly speaking, the strategic leadership of the firm can act as an impediment or facilitator of turnaround” (Trahms, Ndofor and Sirmon, 2013);

Theme 4: Main actors and their relevance to corporate turnaround

Point 4.1.              “In a turnaround the business is likely to need help from …. the turnaround practitioners (or ‘company doctors’)” (Blayney, 2005);

Point 4.2.              “Although successful restructurings have included the enhancement of the planning system, increased decentralization, and more inclusive styles of human resource management, the element of reorganization that is most often associated with successful turnaround is replacement of the chief executive or members of the senior management team (Boyne, 2004)..” (Pearce II and Robbins, 2008);

Point 4.3.              “Declining organizations are likely to have better chances of revival when they have cooperative industrial relations between union and the management” (Maheshwari, 2000);

Point 4.4.              “Firms that maintain present customers during the turnaround may find the time frame in which they can enact turnaround lengthened, because maintaining customers may stem further declines in profitability (Bruton et al., 2003)..” (Trahms, Ndofor and Sirmon, 2013);

Point 4.5.              “Turnaround managers that attribute decline to controllable internal factors are more likely to initiate strategic change. Successful turnaround managers take ownership and responsibility for the situation even when it cannot be traced to controllable or predictable factors, and they act with speed to implement an improved strategic plan (Longenecker, Mitchell, & Fink, 2007)..” (Pearce II and Robbins, 2008);

Point 4.6.              “..the concerns and challenges managers face when executing an organizational turnaround are unique and distinct from those of improving performance in a nondecline situation. First, managers must improve performance in a situation of scarce and dwindling organizational and environmental resources. Next, they do so within a context of increasing stakeholder conflict ….Finally, despite the imperative for decisive action to turn around performance, managers of declining firms make decisions with diminished managerial discretion …” (Trahms, Ndofor and Sirmon, 2013);

Theme 5: Research issues and topics in corporate turnaround

Point 5.1.               “…Since the mid-1990s, the term corporate (or business) restructuring has gained popularity in the management literature as a less pejorative label than turnaround to describe reactive changes in strategy precipitated by poor company performance” (Pearce II and Robbins, 2008);

Point 5.2.              “….researchers have generally failed to operationally define retrenchment as an integral part of the turnaround process and to systematically assess its utility in facilitating business recovery. Rather, they focus on the ensuing change in company strategy, known as the recovery response” (Robbins and Pearce II, 1992);

Point 5.3.               “Corporate turnaround research has described retrenchment and recovery as contradictory forces that should be addressed separately. …. Drawing on the paradox literature, we argue that retrenchment and recovery form a duality: they are both contradictory and complementary…” (Schmitt and Raisch, 2013);

Point 5.4.              “Since the severe economic downturns in the 1970s, organizational decline and turnarounds have received accumulating attention in various research fields and disciplines” (Lamberg and Pajunen, 2005);

Point 5.5.              “The degree to which managers actually have the ability to turn a company around is a matter of some debate. The management literature has a long history of crediting or, to be more exact, blaming an organization’s decline and its eventual death on the misalignment of the organization to the environment” (Sheppard and Chowdhury, 2005);

Point 5.6.              “While most turnaround scholars focus on retrenchment–recovery tensions, some have argued that integrating the two activities can also create benefits (e.g. Pajunen, 2005)..” (Morrow, Johnson and Busenitz, 2004);

Point 5.7.               “According to early research (Hofer, 1980; Schendel et al., 1976), turnaround firms opt for either retrenchment or recovery, depending on the cause of decline: retrenchment when they experience internal inefficiencies that threaten their survival, and recovery when their strategies and the environment are misaligned” (Morrow, Johnson and Busenitz, 2004);

Point 5.8.              “In the 20 years since the last review on organizational decline and turnaround, the scope of turnaround research has expanded dramatically; however, research on this phenomenon remains empirically and theoretically fragmented” (Trahms, Ndofor and Sirmon, 2013);

Point 5.9.              “A change in strategy is a critical last step in a turnaround process that is undertaken to correct declining firm performance. Consequently, the identification of the fundamental attributes of successful turnaround strategies has become an important stream of research for scholars who attempt to inform executives who are tasked as turnaround managers” (Pearce II and Robbins, 2008);

Point 5.10.         “folktales may provide a rich source of knowledge on how organizations proceed during crisis and survival, given that their deeper function is to intentionally distribute crucial information on how to manage situations that threaten the existence of a group or organization” (Lamberg and Pajunen, 2005);

Altogether, five themes are identified from the analysis. They are:

Theme 1: Definitions of key concepts and their underlying mechanisms at work;

Theme 2: The corporate turnaround process and sub-processes involved;

Theme 3: Specific and situational considerations involved in corporate turnaround;

Theme 4: Main actors and their relevance to corporate turnaround;

Theme 5: Research issues and topics in corporate turnaround.

Each of them has a set of associated points (i.e., idea, viewpoints, concepts and findings). Two themes have subthemes; they are theme 1 (Definitions of key concepts and their underlying mechanisms at work) and theme 3 (Specific and situational considerations involved in corporate turnaround). Together they provide an organized way to comprehend the knowledge structure of the corporate turnaround topic. The referencing indicated on the points identified informs the readers where to find the academic articles to learn more about the details on these points. The process of conducting the thematic analysis is an exploratory as well as synthetic learning endeavour on the topic’s literature. Once the structure of the themes, sub-themes and their associated points are finalized, the reviewer is in a position to move forward to step 2 of the MMBLR approach. The MMBLR approach step 2 finding, i.e., a companion mind map on corporate turnaround, is presented in the next section.

4.     A mind map on the knowledge structure of corporate turnaround

By adopting the findings from the MMBLR approach step 1 on the corporate turnaround topic, the writer constructs a companion mind map shown as Figure 1.

Referring to the mind map on corporate turnaround, the topic label is shown right at the centre of the map as a large blob. Five main branches are attached to it, corresponding to the five themes identified in the thematic analysis. In the same vein, two branches have sub-branches, which represent the sub-themes recognized in the thematic analysis findings (i.e., the MMBLR approach step 1). The links and ending nodes with key phrases represent the points from the thematic analysis. As a whole, the mind map renders an image of the knowledge structure on corporate turnaround based on the thematic analysis findings, see also the Organizational turnaround and renewal Facebook page for additional information on corporate turnaround. Constructing the mind map is part of the learning process on literature review. The mind mapping process is speedy and entertaining. The resultant mind map also serves as a useful presentation and teaching material. This mind mapping experience confirms the writer’s previous experience using on the MMBLR approach (Ho, 2016). Readers are also referred to the Literature on literature review Facebook page and the Literature on mind mapping Facebook page for additional information on these two topics.

5.     Concluding remarks

The MMBLR approach to study corporate turnaround provided here is mainly for its practice illustration as its procedures have been refined via a number of its employment on an array of topics (Ho, 2016). No additional MMBLR steps nor notions have been introduced in this article. In this respect, the exercise reported here primarily offers some pedagogical value as well as some systematic and stimulated learning on corporate turnaround. Nevertheless, the thematic findings and the image of the knowledge structure on corporate turnaround in the form of a mind map should also be of academic value to those who research on this topic.

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