Abstract Based on four financial distressed enterprises and programmatic Grounded Theory analysis, this paper studies the process of financial distress and summarizes the phase-specific characteristics of mild distress, exacerbated distress, and severe distress. The paper reveals that psychological factors such as entrepreneurs’ seeking management power and their overconfidence play pivotal roles in the process of an enterprise from mild distress to more intensified distress. Furthermore, the mechanism accelerating and exacerbating an enterprise’s descent into severe distress is the positive feedback interaction between the operational cycle and financing cycle after one of them is disrupted. To avoid plunging into severe distress, stakeholders possessing complementary resources or risk-bearing capacity can be introduced. Such stakeholders can help suppress the vicious cycle generated by the dual-cycle interaction.
DENG Yuxin,JIANG Xueying,ZHANG Qilu等. Dual-Cycle Interactive Mechanism of the Evolution Process of Financial Distress[J]. Chinese Journal of Management, 2025, 22(6): 1001-.