Stories of Survival: Lessons from Knowledge Intensive Organisations and the Finnish 1990s Recession

The Finnish recession of the 1990s has been regarded as unusually severe and it resulted in a high bankruptcy rate on an organisational level. The question at issue is what we can learn from the stories of the surviving organisations. Mistakes and success are regarded as sources for learning, and in this study the focus is on learning from success, as it is assumed to be a valuable base for constructing strategies that may counteract future failure. On a general level, the question asked is how the organisations studied survived under highly uncertain conditions. The focus of the study is mainly on managerial issues.