Welcome to the nexus of business: Turnaround Management! Companies, or subsidiaries within otherwise healthy companies, often are in need of a corporate turnaround or restructuring due to operational, financial, or managerial problems that arise as the company’s business environment changes over time.

This course will integrate the functional disciplines of the core curriculum, building upon your basic understanding of accounting, corporate finance, product marketing, organizational leadership development, and strategy formulation. Although this course is driven by a focus on the strategic, operational, and human resource considerations regarding how a general manager handles a distressed business situation, there still is a significant amount of required work in the financial and accounting subject areas. This course will also provide you with an understanding, paradigm, and model structure for identifying, remedying, and resolving troubled and distressed business situations. You will learn from the standpoint of a general operating manager how to distinguish between companies that can be repaired (given existing resource constraints) and those situations where sale or liquidation of the company actually is the best alternative to pursue.

Although the primary focus of this course is troubled companies and troubled divisions within otherwise healthy companies, the perspectives and analytical framework for identifying problems, assessing alternatives, and making decisions that impact the future survival of a business are skills that also are applicable in a start-up environment, where scarce resources and time constraints create a similar need for evaluating incomplete and inaccurate data in order to make time-sensitive decisions that directly impact the future viability of the business. You should take this course if you are interested in pursuing a career in (a) restructuring advisory, turnaround management, or activist/distressed investing; (b) private equity and want to learn how to assess and address problems arising in your portfolio companies; or (c) general management or entrepreneurship and want to have a foundational understanding of how to handle a crisis situation when it arises in your company.

Kathryn Harrigan

Henry R. Kravis Professor of Business Leadership

Professor Harrigan, who teaches strategic management courses about corporate growth (as well as turnaround management), is a specialist in corporate strategy, strategic alliances, mergers and acquisitions, diversification strategy, in turnarounds, industry restructurings and the competitive problems of mature- and declining-demand businesses, and in industry and competitor analysis. Most recently, Professor Harrigan has researched the role of technological synergies in corporate strategy. She has served...

View full profile