• Divestment involving the external sale of part of the organisation or the internal closure of units, as part of a rationalisation progamme.
• Liquidation of the business by selling it to one or more buyers; this entails an admission of failure by the senior managers and the face may mean this alternative is not considered seriously until there are no others available.
All four strategies (retrenchment, turnaround, divestment and liquidation) associated with decline require managers to make difficult decisions, which may have adverse effects on all of the organizations stakeholders D particularly on its employees. These issues will be considered later in the context of “business ethics and social responsibility”.
Large-scale redundancy programmes do not assist this process, but managers sometimes have to balance the negative effects on staff against realities. This requires them to take into account the relative importance of factors such as effectiveness, effort, loyalty, experience and efficiency.