Albert J. Dunlap, a tough-talking executive whose ardor for turning around troubled companies by laying off workers and closing factories earned him the nickname Chainsaw Al, but whose career ended in an accounting scandal, died on Jan. 25 at his home in Ocala, Fla. He was 81.

The cause was prostate cancer, said Eric Carr, a friend and executive with the fund-raising arm of Florida State University athletics, to which Mr. Dunlap pledged more than $40 million.

Mr. Dunlap portrayed himself as a foe of corporate waste and a servant of the shareholders who benefited from his actions. In the 1990s, when he ran Scott Paper, he laid off 11,200 workers; it was just one measure he took that brought him financial rewards of $100 million in salary, stock profits and other compensation after engineering the company’s sale to Kimberly-Clark in 1995.

“Sure, people had to get fired, but as time goes by that company will grow and prosper and new jobs will be created,” he told The South Florida Sun-Sentinel soon after.