Creating opportunities in the face of an environmental jolt: exploring turnaround strategizing practices within large Irish construction contractors

Abstract

Firms that face organizational decline choreographed from an environmental jolt must seek new ways of creating opportunities in order to successfully turnaround. As such, the identification of pertinent turnaround strategies becomes increasingly important for senior management. Within the strategy-as-practice scholarly, there have been recent calls to move beyond empirical “isolationism” and to connect with other larger social phenomena; while across the turnaround literature there have been calls to explore the process and micro-structure of turnaround strategies in cyclical environments. To address this research gap, the purpose of the study is to adopt a tall ontology by blending the strategy-as-practice lens with the organizational decline and turnaround lens. By drawing on five exploratory case studies of large Irish construction contractors, the central objective is thus to explore firms’ turnaround strategizing practices during an environmental jolt. In order to advance our tall ontology, we developed a turnaround strategizing process model (and propositions) that integrates our findings, and which offers the fundamental building blocks of a new blended theory. We find that successful turnaround attempts entail the simultaneous interaction of non-aggressive cost retrenchment actions and non-extensive internationalization. The case studies further suggest that during a prolonged environmental jolt, cost retrenchment is more often a long-term strategy. Lastly, the findings provide valuable support for practitioners in developing a successful turnaround response, and in aiding the selection and timing of operational and strategic actions.

Keywords:

• Internationalization
• Ireland
• organizational turnaround
• retrenchment
• strategy-as-practice

Acknowledgement

An earlier version of this paper was presented to the ARCOM 2016 Conference: Tansey and Spillane (2016). The authors were invited by the editors of Construction Management and Economics to develop the paper for publication in this journal.