This is a reprint of a previously published book. It's original title was Strategies for Decliing Businesses.

EBOOK: Business Economics: A Contemporary Approach

This book addresses the widespread concern regarding British industry's ability to compete internationally. Through an analysis of the UK automotive components sector, the author examines the central issues at the core of the competitiveness debate and outlines why there has been such a widespread and severe decline in the performance of British manufacturing. It draws on findings from visits to thirty British manufacturers and also to thirty overseas manufacturers in Germany, the USA and Japan, matched on a product basis to allow comparisons and a genuine international perspective. The author concludes that competitive decline is due, in part, to a weakness in the strategic management capability of many UK companies, and also to the lack of adequate co-ordination and co-operation between customer and supplier industries. Dr Carr identifies the remaining areas of vulnerability and priorities for action, and finally considers the implications for Britain's overall competitiveness.

A growing body of literature in the area of business administration has focused on the phenomenon of decline. These studies span multiple levels of analysis and draws on a range of disciplines, including strategic management, economics, and economic geography. Managing Decline: A Research Overview provides a summary of this research by focusing on three key levels of analysis: industries, clusters, and organizations. The targeted reviews in this book map each individual level of analysis separately and the discussion section outlines overarching themes regarding decline and its management. The three levels are analyzed by identifying different forms, causes, processes, and management options regarding decline. This is accompanied by the identification of key academic discourses that have been used to analyze decline. The discussion section highlights broader themes regarding the nature and management of decline that span across the different levels of analysis. This book provides an easy-to-access summary on the nature and management of decline for academic scholars and business practitioners, and is essential reading for getting an overview of this broad field of research.

Achim Schmitt examines the role of efficiency and growth through innovation within corporate restructuring efforts. He develops a restructuring model that is empirically tested in the German-speaking consulting market for corporate restructurings. He, thereby, provides a state-of-the-art view of the factors and activities underlying successful corporate restructuring efforts.

The risk-based approach to capital markets regulation is in crisis. Climate change, shifting demographics, geopolitical conflicts and other environmental discontinuities threaten established business models and shorten the life spans of listed companies. The current rules for periodic disclosure in the EU fail to inform market participants adequately. Unlike risks, uncertainties are unquantifiable or may only be quantified at great cost, causing them to be insufficiently reflected in periodic reports. This is unfortunate, given the pivotal role capital markets must play in the economy’s adaptation to environmental discontinuities. It is only with a reformed framework for periodic disclosure, that gradual and orderly adaptation to these discontinuities appears feasible. To ensure orderly market adaptation, a new reporting format is required: scenario analysis should be integrated into the European framework for periodic disclosure.

It is never very obvious to spectators of the newspaper business just why it is that the industry has suffered so badly in recent years. Most ascribe the reasons to the arrival of the Internet in all its forms when, in truth, most of its problems were created by the newspaper managements themselves, either by weak management in the control of its environment, by a serious lack of foresight in looking to the future, or by assuming that change, if it were to come, would be at the slow pace of past change. The magisterial attitudes of most newspaper managements served to engender a growing resentment particularly among the advertisers who were forced to pay increased rates to enable the cover prices of the publications to be held down. The British Newspaper Industry sets out to distinguish the newspaper industry from the generality of single product organisations and to provide tailored solutions to its problems by drawing on a variety of techniques and practices successfully used in other industries.