Abstract:

This paper focuses on the investigation of business failure. We have set two objectives. Based on the concept of business failure considered as a process, we intend to explain different processes leading to failure already described in previous papers. The second objective is to study these processes from a sample of failed businesses, and describe the relation between the process that follows a failed company and its final and irreversible situation. This final situation can be one of the following: active business in insolvency, liquidation or dissolution. In conclusion, on the one hand, it is found that there is no relation between the failure process and the organizations final situations and, on the other hand, we observed that the variables selected permit to distinguish between different failure processes.