The study in turnaround situations to small and medium enterprises (SME) in Taiwan Abstract The Taiwan economic in the past thirty years gains a very positive reputation in the world. They said it¡¦s a miracle for such a small territory country shows its powerful activities. There are more than 97% small to medium enterprises in Taiwan. The flexibility and efficiency of the SME impresses us. Recently the world business circumstances changed. A new theory of ¡§Transferable Social Resource¡¨ indicates why many Taiwan manufactory makers move their production line to China. Those local SME has to find a new way to face the challenge of the business circumstance. Each turnaround becomes the important choice of SME. This study is to show the organizational crisis before change, the forces to make changing decision, the process of turnaround, and how the changing influences the special relationship among business net. And we found: 1. Organizational crisis ¢¹ Poor inner management: for example, none participating type organization; the weakness in financial management ¢º External reasons for decline ¢» The poor communications inside the organization, A timing solution of it is important to solve problems, The Prejudice of the CEO in favor of either side will hurt the relationship to worse situation. ¢¼ The confidence between the associates becomes the basic factor to develop the organizational capability. 2. The process of turnaround ¢¹ How to finish the old business ¢º Some CEO may not face the financial problems as an important factor before the changing ¢» The confidence of those financial supporters may become the key point whether it is a successful turnaround. ¢¼ The destructive costs include (1)The request of exchanging by cash. (2) The payments of orders were transferred late. (3) The shortage of cash under certain cases. ¢½ The way SME solve financial problem is to lend money from their relatives or friends. ¢¾ A CEO gave his company¡¦s stock to the key staffs of the company under organization crisis.

The management dilemma emanates from the inadequacy and weakly detailed turnaround models available for use by entrepreneurs and turnaround practitioners in South Africa. To add to this problem previous legislation did not provide any protection to the debtor in any turnaround attempts. New debtor friendly legislation comes into effect in 2011. This research aims to identify the verifiers for signs and causes of potential failure. The construct verifier determinant is theoretically defined and included into a practical turnaround framework. The primary objectives of the study are to: <ul><li> Identify and theoretically define early warning sign “verifier determinants” </li><li> To design and include “verifier determinants” as an integral part of a turnaround plan that supports corrective action. </li></ul> The secondary objectives of this study are to: <ul><li> Research the current formal turnaround practices, which are applied in the United States of America, Canada, Australia, Africa and informal practices evident in South Africa. These findings are aligned to include the changes in the applicable South African legislation. </li><li> Design and propose a framework for use by turnaround practitioners and entrepreneurs alike (conforming to new legislation). </li><li> Identify which “verifier determinants” will confirm the early warning and apply this outcome to the design of a reliable turnaround framework, acceptable to all creditors and financial institutions. </li><li> The final objective is to contribute to the South African entrepreneurial, turnaround body of knowledge, and future formal studies in this academically ill-represented field. </li></ul> The effectiveness of business turnaround depends on the chosen strategy. The literature review in this proposal deals with the following aspects; venture risk propensity, early warning signs and failure models, legal constraints / opportunities and finally turnaround. Current formal turnaround routes are, due to various negativities and high costs, often not practical and a more informal approach is favoured. Methodology: <ul><li> Through comprehensive literature research to identify and theoretically define “verifier determinants” that confirm the early warning sign and causes. Apply in depth interviews to identify the use of verifier determinants by specialist turnaround practitioners. </li><li> Confirm the actual use and value of the verifier determinants by experts and practitioners during turnarounds, Design and include “verifier determinants” as an integral part of a turnaround framework that supports rehabilitation of the business. </li><li> Compare the formal turnaround practices, which are applied in other jurisdictions such as the United States of America, Canada, Australia, Africa will be investigated. </li><li> Adapt the framework cognisant of Chapter six of the companies Act, Act 71 of 2008 requirements and recommend to formal and informal turnaround practices relevant in South Africa. </li></ul> For this study, a leading commercial bank was selected as the organisation of choice, due to the accessibility to information, research data, and turnaround respondents. For selecting the case studies used for evaluation during interviews, the researcher relied on businesses that were already subjected to BASEL II Accord categorisation criteria and had ex post facto histories. The study applied two research methods. An interview method was used to identify actual verifier determinants used in practice. The interrogation of the participants was done, using the Repertory Grid method, thus forcing choices and explanation of interviewee reasoning. Participants were purposely selected to ensure representation within the identified risk categories. As result, a comprehensive turnaround framework is compiled. The study aligns these findings with the new South African legislation, and designs a turnaround framework for use by turnaround professional practitioners, entrepreneurs and affected persons alike. This study introduced a number of new constructs that can be used in a business turnaround context, namely: <ul><li> business triage</li><li> verifier determinant</li><li> turnaround framework, introducing the constructs “business triage” and “verifier determinant” a timeline schedule for executing the rescue process</li></ul> This study highlighted the importance of establishing the true value of a business in the early stages of the turnaround process. Verifiers can be used successfully to determine the extent of the problem (“depth of the rot”), the difficulties involved and reduce time requirements for analysis. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2011. / Business Management / unrestricted

Thesis advisor: Rebecca Lowenhaupt / This single case study examines how stakeholders of a local education agency (LEA) understand and implement state turnaround policy for its chronically underperforming schools. While there is ample research on how to improve chronically underperforming schools that research becomes limited when looking at turnaround implementation actions that are in response to policy mandates. This qualitative study uses the theory frame of policy sense-making to identify how implementers come to understand turnaround policy and to explore how that sense-making impacts their implementation decisions. This individual study examines how school board members make sense of their roles as policy implementers. Findings resulting from interviews, observation and document analysis highlight how the role of the turnaround school board has become ambiguous and misunderstood particularly as their historical roles have evolved, state activism has increased and the authority of the superintendent has expanded. Results indicate that board members tend to make sense of their turnaround policy implementation role primarily through their budgeting and financial oversight responsibilities. In so doing, they depend on the social and political capital they have accrued as experts of the local context which allows them to serve as resource facilitators, resource bridge builders and resource navigators. Communication between school board members and internal/external policy implementers emerged as an influencing factor in board member sense-making. Findings indicate that school board members identify the superintendent as the primary conduit for communication, and interpretation of their internal turnaround policy role. Communication from external agents such as state monitors had a mixed influence on board member policy sense-making. An unexpected finding was the role of a "dissenting voice" on school board sense-making. Recommendations are made for clarifying and strengthening the role of school boards in turnaround districts to increase the effectiveness of policy implementation. / Thesis (EdD) — Boston College, 2014. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Educational Leadership and Higher Education.

This research is about the problem of identifying key factors for corporate recovery of electric utilities in New Zealand and the Philippines. Its primary objective is to learn from the experiences of three regulated government utilities and one small private distributor that are involved in the three sectors of electricity business in power generation, transmission and distribution. How these firms survived their decline problems, and managed and sustained their turnaround efforts is the focus of this study. The results indicate the importance of change management, leadership, cost reduction and financial control in reversing the decline of these firms. Also underscored are the crucial role of efficiency improvement and achievement of profit together with winning employee commitment and broad stakeholder support in sustaining the recovery effort.These comparative case studies were undertaken at a time when crises and turbulence affected the management and organisation of electricity businesses in the Asia/Pacific region, particularly New Zealand and the Philippines. Electric utilities in both countries are regulated and less vertically integrated than anywhere else in the region. Significant changes to the ownership and control of these firms and their competitive relationships over the past decade have complicated the way strategic problems and issues have to be resolved. In the meantime, threats and pressures from all stakeholders have made the management and operations of these utilities difficult.Thus, a critical review of their specific circumstances and predicaments is in order for similarly affected enterprises to avoid past errors and to replicate only the strategies that may suit them. In this regard, this work contributes to the enrichment of the existing body of knowledge in business policy and strategic management that has been fast evolving during the ++ / nineties in electric utilities around the world.

This dissertation proposes a new, synthesized perspective for explaining the “Nonmetropolitan Turnaround” in the 1970s and 1990s. By studying the definition of urbanization carefully, using the human ecological perspective, many processes happening during the “Nonmetropolitan Turnaround” in the 1970s and 1990s, such as suburbanization, deconcentration, and counterurbanization, can be understood as different forms of the urbanization processes. When the majority of the population was rural, the dominant pattern of urbanization was rural-urban migration. When the majority of the population became urban, the dominant urbanization pattern reversed to urbanrural migration because urban centers had reached beyond their optimal density and processes operated to reduce their density. This paper hypothesizes that the two “turnarounds” were simply the result of different aspects of urbanization complicated by metropolitan status reclassifications. The perspectives of suburbanization, counterurbanization and deconcentration are integrated into the urbanization perspective. Using migration flow data compiled by the Census Bureau from 1975 to 1980 and from 1995 to 2000, the summary analyses confirmed that the net migration due to the three forms of urbanization largely accounted for all of the net migrant flows. This dissertation further tested the validity of optimal density theory with net migration data and confirmed the utility of this perspective in predicting the direction of net migration.

Avdelningen för klinisk kemi vid Länssjukhuset i Kalmar analyserar läkemedel och alkoholer med BD Vacutainer® Plus Plastic Serum Tube (Serum Tube), som kräver en koagulationstid i upp till 60 minuter. BD Vacutainer® Rapid Serum Tube (RST™) innehåller trombin och kräver en koagulationstid på endast 5 minuter. Syftet med studien var att undersöka möjligheten att förkorta den preanalytiska väntetiden före centrifugering vid intoxikationsanalyser i serumrör från akutmottagningen. Studien utfördes genom att jämföra RST™ med Serum Tube vid analys av S-Paracetamol och S-Etanol. Totalt analyserades 70 prover för S-Paracetamol, varav 35 RST™ och 35 Serum Tube från 35 patienter. Analys av S-Etanol utfördes på 60 prover, varav 30 RST™ och 30 Serum Tube från 30 patienter. RST™ centrifugerades efter 5 minuter och Serum Tube efter 50 minuter, före kolorimetrisk analys på analysinstrumentet VITROS® 5,1 FS. Resultaten för S-Paracetamol var inom intervallet 74,9 – 198,7 µmol/L för RST™ och inom 76,6 – 195,3 µmol/L för Serum Tube. Resultaten för S-Etanol var inom intervallet 7,5 – 74,5 mmol/L för RST™ och inom 7,5 – 74,8 mmol/L för Serum Tube. Pearsons korrelationskoefficient var 0,9977 för S-Paracetamol och 0,9980 för S-Etanol och det fanns en liten positiv bias vid analys med RST™ för båda analyterna, men ingen signifikant skillnad (p&gt;0,05) mellan provrören påvisades. Användning av RST™ på akutmottagningen medför en förkortad preanalytisk väntetid och en snabbare turnaround time (TAT). Hypotesen att S-Paracetamol och S-Etanol kan analyseras med RST™ på VITROS® 5,1 FS stämmer, med undantag för höga koncentrationer av S-Paracetamol som inte kunde utvärderas. För att RST™ ska kunna användas rutinmässigt bör därför ytterligare studier utföras.

The K–12 American education system is inundated with school reform policies and legislation that aim to transform schools from low-performing to high-performing academic institutions. Through the conceptual framework of school improvement, this case study examined the educational reform journeys of two rural Maine high schools that were officially identified by the State as failing schools in 2010 because they did not achieve Adequate Yearly Progress. A major difference between the two schools was one school applied for and accepted a federal School Improvement Grant (SIG) and the other school did not. By 2013, both of these schools attained turnaround status and are no longer designated as “persistently low-achieving.” This case study sought to understand the role of leadership, instruction, school culture, and financial resources in improving persistently low academic achievement at the high school level in rural areas. Maine state assessment data in the content areas of reading and mathematics were analyzed for statistical significance over a six-year span that included pre- and post-turnaround years. Qualitative data were used to describe the action steps of each school and the reasons for the reform paths they chose. This mixed methods research provided a fuller description of the journeys of these two schools. The findings, reflections, conclusions and recommendations offer insight and new learning for school reform efforts in rural locations.

The following thesis will examine, and utilize, an in-depth case study of a family business turnaround by a new change leader. Theory will be used to explore and extend existing models concerning family business, organizational crisis, turnaround, and leadership. A non-sequential model will be developed that looks into the past in order to understand the present and seek out strategies for the future. Interviews were conducted with the Senior Leadership Team (SLT) of the firm and will be analyzed and discussed in the subsequent sections along with a theoretical framework. These analyses will help the authors answer their research questions in order to fulfill the purpose and ultimately formulate a model.

Organisational change, particularly turnaround strategies have always been perceived differently, and received with mixed feelings by employees. The primary aim of this research was to explore the perceptions of SABC employees about the organisation’s turnaround strategy. The study employed a qualitative research design and conducted semi-structured interviews with ten employees and four key informants from the SABC’s radio-park in Auckland Park. A thematic content analysis was used to analyse the data that was received from the participants. Employees’ perceptions that emerged from a thematic content analysis of the study were, a need to balance organisation’s needs with the needs of all employees, employees’ concerns about their job security, relationships and communication gaps between management and general employees and employees’ different and vague understanding of the turnaround strategy. The main findings of this study were, SABC employees understood and perceived the turnaround strategy to be a cost cutting mechanism by the organisation to reduce its operational costs, the participants also indicated that they did not participate in any decision making regarding the turnaround strategy. The main conclusion drawn from the study is that the SABC should have allowed its employees to fully participate in the entire process of the turnaround strategy and use the strategy as a learning opportunity for its employees.

Thesis advisor: Rebecca Lowenhaupt / This single case study examines how stakeholders of a local education agency (LEA) understand and implement state turnaround policy for its chronically underperforming schools. While there is ample research on how to improve chronically underperforming schools, that research becomes limited when looking at turnaround implementation actions that are in response to policy mandates. This qualitative study uses the theory frame of policy sense-making to identify how implementers come to understand turnaround policy and to explore how that sense-making impacts their implementation decisions. The study findings were that teachers recognized three main stages of turnaround. In the first stage building principals used directive leadership to build a unified vision. Implementers reported that this unified vision was partly brought about by the removal of any teaching staff not in line with the principal's turnaround plan. The second stage of turnaround centered on building teacher capacity through internal and external professional development. Internal professional development meant creating multiple meeting configurations where teachers could stay in touch with the turnaround process, offer input, and continually learn from each other. External professional development involved developing teacher skills to more effectively and more rapidly raise student achievement. Findings from across four different implementer groups pointed to the importance of building teachers' ability to understand and use data to improve their instruction as well as student learning. Time for both types of professional development came largely from the introduction of extended learning time (ELT) that was paid for through state and federal grant monies. In the third stage teachers worried about the sustainability of turnaround once the resources from state and federal grants were gone. Hope for sustainability was found most present within the bonds formed by teachers who grew to rely on and trust one another during the arduous work of school turnaround. / Thesis (EdD) — Boston College, 2014. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Educational Leadership and Higher Education.