Corporate Turnaround: How Managers Turn Losers Into Winners!, By Donald B. Bibeault. Mcgraw-hill, 1221 Avenue Of The Americas, New York, Ny 10020; 406 Pp., $24.95.

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Even the mighty can fall -- and fail. (Some familiar near and total collapses: W. T. Grant, National Cash Register, Penn Central, Lockheed, Chrysler, Memorex, National Student Marketing, A&P, LTV, Singer, American Motors.) To acquire a date base for understanding what lies behind such fiscal foundering, author Bibeault, a practicing turnaroundist, interviewed the chief executive officers of almost 100 publicly troubled firms. The liberally quoted responses -- and Bibeault's exceptionally cogent analyses of them -- make absorbing business reading.

Although he focuses on larger, mature companies, many of the warning signs, precautionary prescriptions, and management turnaround tenets apply equally to struggling smaller firms. Occasionally, a small-business CEO has something to say, too. Comments one: "Very rarely do you find a situation where the founders are capable of carrying a company through all the stages of growth." Adds another, "Very often the problem is the top man himself." Indeed, the exercise of sole authority, concludes the author, can be disastrous. "Companies that fail," he says, "do not undertake well-executed profit improvement programs, do not sell off losing activities, and do not allow a stronger company to take them over. Their stubbornness... is usually because of one-man rule."

Predictably, bad management is at the core of most business declines, Bibeault finds, and he directs his cures toward changing management views -- or management itself. His programs for reversing sagging profits add up to an authoritative course in how to run a business properly, since making money is also the avoidance of losing it. Growth strategies, remedies for negative cash flow, elimination of weak products, improving working capital, and other techniques are as important to a sound business as they are to a struggling one. And the parts of the book that are specifically turnaround oriented -- how a new manager should take charge, for example -- are unmistakably the inspiration of a skilled professional who has looked down the barrel of Chapter 11 several times over and learned how to tough his way out.