Predicting Business Failure: Identifying High-Risk Contractors.

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the usefulness of the qualitative information found in annual financial reports for making predictions about corporate failure. The content of the president's cover letters for a matched pair of firms, failed versus non-failed, spanning the five-year period prior to failure were analyzed and scored for integrative complexity. The major finding was that a firm may be identified as a probable candidate for failure as many as five years prior to the time of entering bankruptcy proceedings. When employed in conjunction with current prescribed analytical techniques utilized by Department of Defense contracting and purchasing officials in determining a contractor's capacity to perform, this technique may prove useful in identifying high-risk contractors, thereby reducing the risk of financial loss to the government. (Author)

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jun 01, 1983
Accession Number
ADA132163

Entities

People

  • William Mckinley Matthews

Organizations

  • Naval Postgraduate School

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Biomedical
  • Energy and Power Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Accounting
  • Acquisition
  • Behavioral Research
  • Behavioral Sciences
  • Business Administration
  • California
  • Commerce
  • Contract Administration
  • Contractors
  • Contracts
  • Department Of Defense
  • Information Processing
  • Models
  • Political Science
  • Probabilistic Models
  • Social Sciences
  • United States

Readers

  • Defense Acquisition Program Management
  • Economics
  • Systems Analysis and Design