SME insolvency, bankruptcy, and survival: an examination of retrenchment strategies

A key assertion in the turnaround literature is that when survival is threatened, it is necessary to undertake asset and cost retrenchment strategies that stabilise the performance decline and provide a base for survival and recovery. Correcting for methodological weaknesses in the literature, this study of Spanish SMEs finds that retrenchment of inventory and employees is associated with liquidation. Furthermore, neither intangible asset nor tangible asset retrenchment is associated with survival. Only retrenchment of debt is associated with survival. These results challenge conventional wisdom on retrenchment in turnaround situations. Automatic, across-the-board retrenchment is not a universal panacea to achieve turnaround and should not be implemented as a reflex response to insolvency. Instead, managers of insolvent firms should focus on liquidity and operational improvements, which result in debt reduction. Great care should be taken with the need for, and the extent of, retrenchment in inventory and employees

Environmental jolts, family-centered non-economic goals and innovation:Toward a framework of family firm resilience

Building on extant research on family firm resilience, we propose a framework to discuss the impact of family-centered non-economic goals on a firm’s ability to absorb and react to environmental jolts. This chapter aims to advance current knowledge on the goal-related antecedents of innovation strategies in family firms by theorizing on how family firms approach slack resource deployment and choose between investments in closed vs. open innovation as a response to environmental jolts. Building on prospect theory assumptions about risk-taking behavior, we make a contribution to understanding heterogeneity of resilient family firms, which are spurred to innovate in light of the degree of relevance of pursued family-centered non-economic goals