CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1. Background of the Study
The earliest author to support and accept the benefits of succession planning was Henry Fayol. As the managing director of a large coal mine in France, Fayol became fascinated by the practice of management, and mapped out the principles for effective organizations through his fourteen principles of management in 1916.He believed that deliberate leadership replacement planning was a requirement of managers and that it was the only way to avoid organizational missteps by putting persons in positions for which they were not ready. Stability of tenure of personnel as one of his principles, explains the need for employees to be given time to settle with their jobs, absence of which may lead to unnecessary turnover and bad management. This indicates that failure to prepare the workforce of tomorrow would lead to filing leadership vacancies improperly. Fayol was also passionate in his belief that all employees should have a chance to prosper and that talented employees could climb from the lowest to the highest levels of the hierarchy. (Rothwell 2005, Weihrich, Cannice, and Koontz 2008)
It was research into the impact of leadership changes in baseball team performance that perhaps triggered interest in succession as an important organizational activity (Azure, 2008). Gamson and Scotch (1964) put forth a ritual scapegoating theory of succession that was demonstrated through the work of their study of professional baseball. The team owners and general managers generally have a more significant role in obtaining talent and conducting the operations of the team, but when the performance of the baseball team falters, the on-field manager (or coach) is the one that is publicly fired, ultimately displacing the blame, and creating a succession approach. (The Leadership Quarterly 2005)
Succession management as a formal mechanism probably made its biggest advances with the rise of the “corporation” in the 1950s and 1960s. Growing complexity of size and organizational scope demanded a more systematic way to capture information about individuals, their performance, potential to progress and readiness to take a greater responsibility(Azure, 2008).. Directors and shareholders of multinational companies such as Pepsico began to worry about the future success and direction of their organizations. They realized that by planning who would take over senior positions, they could help ensure company growth and stability. By following the ideas of Fayol and example of pepsico and others, major companies began to adopt succession strategies. Toyota, International Business Machines (IBM), General Electric (GE) and Microsoft are now among the globally – recognized names that use succession planning (Continuum Briefing, 2013)
Grusky (1960) who puts forth the vicious-circle theory states that succession is a universal organization process and its absence leads to organization instability. The incidence of turmoil through changes in policies and practices put forth by the new leader is a part of the vicious circle. Grusky developed research methods to test hypotheses within succession and pave the way for other researchers to follow. His basic reasons for the study of succession were hinged on the following: that administrative succession always leads to organizational instability and that succession planning is a phenomenon that all organization must cope with.
Kesner and Sebora (1994) observed that it was Walter Mahler (1980) that first recognised the advantages of succession planning to companies’ performance and encouragement to preplan for transition by focusing on impacts of succession such as company size, type, industry, methodologies, internal versus external candidates, psychological characteristics with succession, and more in his research.
In the traditional and replacement method, when a business leader retired or died, the organization would appoint a successor, without proactive reasoning but on impulse with the belief on candidate’s abilities, or someone trained for the post would simply step into the role, or in the absence of an obvious candidate, rivals would compete against each other for the right to become leader. Allen (2005) agreed that this was the replacement method and was the traditional method used to fill vacancies in leadership and that it consisted of pre-selecting substitutes for key position. A brief training period may have been implemented to provide the future replacement with information pertaining to the job they might need to fill. Emphasis was placed only on replacement as an answer to vacancies created by a tragedy, such as death or a decision to leave for another position.
Allen (2005) points out that the replacement method has been utilized for decades with relative degree of success because:
1. Organizations were more stable and there were fewer changes in job responsibilities or titles.
2. Technical changes were not as rapid and were more easily anticipated.
3. There were more middle managers available for replacement training.
4. The human resource department employed larger members of staff that were dedicated solely to personnel development.
5. Typical career ladders were rigidly determined and employees rarely tried to deviate from the normal promotional routes.
Succession planning is different from replacement planning because it focuses on forecasting organizational needs. It is not based upon reactions to an unforeseen event. It is based upon proactively securing the human resources needed with regard to their talent in order to ensure the conformity and prosperity of the organization. Armstrong (2009) in agreement with this posits that talent consists of those individuals who can make a difference to contribution or in the longer term by demonstrating the high levels of potentials and that talent should be observed and cultivated from within the organization.
Corporate organizations must therefore think more strategically in terms of their talent roster. An organization ability to master the abundant labour challenges may make the difference between overall organization success and failure. Some of the organizational changes that make the traditional replacement method obsolete for today’s organizations include:
| Project details | Contents |
|---|---|
| Number of Pages | 154 pages |
| Chapter one | Introduction |
| Chapter two | Literature review |
| Chapter three | methodology |
| Chapter four | Data analysis |
| Chapter five | Summary,discussion & recommendations |
| Reference | Reference |
| Questionnaire | Questionnaire |
| Appendix | Appendix |
| Chapter summary | 1 to 5 chapters |
| Available document | PDF and MS-word format |
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