Turnaround Management and Corporate Renewal: A South African Perspective

Abstract

Every person faces turnaround situations at various points in their lives. The circumstances maynot be as dramatic asthose oftheCEOof a batteredWall Street bank, aDetroit automobile corporation or a beleaguered South African electrical utility. Nevertheless, the situations will be important, even crucial, to the people involved, whether these circumstances arise in their careers, personal lives or leisure activities. How people deal with the challenges of turnarounds often influences the quality of their future. The definition of a turnaround that I prefer comes from Stanley Goodman:1 A turnaround is to produce a noticeable and endurable improvement in performance, to turn around the trend of results from down to up, from not good enough to clearly better, from underachieving to acceptable, from losing to winning. Chapter 5 covers definitions in greater detail, but we can apply Goodman’s broad definition to turnarounds in almost anything – a life, an endeavour, a company, a municipality, a nonprofit organisation, a government, a country or even a continent. It not only encompasses dire situations, but also includes corporate renewal and making a good entity even better. There are many outstanding books on turnarounds written by the authors mentioned in the Bibliography as well as other authors. Few people in the private, government and nonprofit sectors in South Africa and Africa, outside the turnaround fraternity, have read any of these books, which are rarely seen in popular bookstores. Everyone associated with this book, Turnaround Management and Corporate Renewal: A South African Perspective, aswell aswith the Managing a Turnaround andCorporate Renewal programme offered by the Wits Business School (WBS), believes that there is a need, and an opportunity, for a comprehensive book on turnarounds with a South African perspective. As Mthuli Ncube points out in his Foreword, there has never been a greater need forturnaround Turnaround Management and Corporate Renewal management than there is now. This book is certainly the most comprehensive book on turnarounds that I and the other contributing authors who read voraciously on the subject have come across. (We have had many others elsewhere in the world to learn from!) It is also pertinent to South Africa. All the contributors have local experience and ties. Eleven of the 13 case studies concern South African organisations, while the other two relate to Zambian companies.