Massive Strategic Failures in the Financial Services Industry

Strategic management theory concentrates mostly on business success. However, much can be learned from studying business failure as well. During the Great Recession, an unusually large number of major financial institutions failed. Many books and government reports document the details of these failures and present various causal analyses. Much remains to be learned, and academic studies using the tools of strategy and other business disciplines should lead to increased understanding of these failures. If we could attain a better understanding of the failures, steps might be taken by executives and regulators to reduce the risk of their repetition.