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A core responsibility of organizational leaders in a world of increasing competition for best talents is positioning right persons and plans for sustainable growth and progress of their respective organizations. However, attracting top talents for key positions is meaningless if it is not backed by winning retention or succession strategies. This paper aims to assess succession management techniques in the Nzema East District (NED) of Ghana to determine incumbent reliability on its own succession knowledge, practice and sustainability.

Through a cross-organizational investigation, this study used qualitative approaches to explore succession knowledge and practice as they relate to effective management and sustainability of selected NED organizations. In all, 60 purposively selected participants were involved in the study.

This study revealed not only that most NED organizational leaders have no succession plans but also that some senior management officials of these organizations, much as their subordinates, lack knowledge and practice of the concept altogether. It also emerged that a leadership succession paradox, where management expressed profound interest in succession planning (SP) learning and practice, adopting SP as a strategic tool and in using SP as insurance for sustainability of NED firms, but presides over the contrary, characterized much of NED management activity.

As a case study, this research is limited in terms of generalizability, but its implications are quite limitless.

The originality of this study lies in an emerging leadership succession paradox where business executives advocate what, in practice and theory, they are themselves opposed to. Contrary to the logic that we practice what we learn, succession management in NED organizations is not only unethical but also paradoxical. This study has not been published and is not being considered for publication anywhere else.

This study explores the different survival strategies employed by family-owned small and medium-sized businesses in Nigeria. The study delves into the dynamics of ensuring business continuity from founders to successors and identifies the success factors that can facilitate seamless leadership transition outcomes.

This study utilised a qualitative multiple-case study approach, with the population consisting of founders from three medium-sized family businesses in Nigeria. Semi-structured interviews were the primary data collection tool used in the study. Furthermore, company documents were analysed to gain further insights into the leadership transition strategies employed in the selected businesses.

Successful transition and survival of family businesses are dependent on the founder's desire and support for transition, successor preparation, building trust and credibility in successors, and instilling a clear vision for the business.

The study's findings will provide valuable insights to leaders of family-owned SMEs, specifically in the development of effective leadership transition action plans. It should be noted that the study is limited to three family-owned businesses in two locations in Nigeria, which may restrict the generalisability of the findings. Despite this, the study offers novel contributions to the current literature by presenting practical strategies for achieving the survival of family businesses in an emerging economy.

This study proposed strategies for business survival, continuity, sustainability and seamless leadership transition for small and medium-sized family-owned businesses. Importantly, the study recommends action plans for present and prospective family business leaders to deepen succession pathways.

With strategy-as-practice theory the authors explore successful business-owning families hand-over of roles to the next generation. The authors argue for the usefulness of strategy-as-practice theory in exploring the complexity and plurality of best practices in intergenerational hand-over. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

A cross-cultural in-depth case study with best practice cases from China, Germany, Sweden, England, Tanzania, Israel and the USA, based on in-depth interviews of family members and non-family employees.

The authors identified three different succession patterns: a “monolithic practice,” a distributed leadership hand-over, and active ownership with a non-family managing director/CEO. Two other types of hand-over practices were categorized as incubator patterns that formed a part of, or replaced, what we traditionally see as a hand-over of roles. Families would switch between these practices.

Surprisingly, a monolithic succession practice (a one-company-one-leadership role) was rarely used. Quantitative and qualitative research should consider, as should advisors to family owners and family businesses, the plurality of succession practices. Education should explore a variation of succession and how the dynamic of gender influences the process.

Giving practitioners, such as research and practitioner, an overview of strategic options so as to explore these in a client or research case.

Adding the notions that the family is an incubator for new entrepreneurship makes it possible to show how not only sector or public policy generate new ventures. That family as source of entrepreneurship has been well established in the field but it mainstream policy thinking the family is not seen as such a source.

The paper offers an integrative model of the complexity of hand-over practices of ownership and leadership roles. It shows how these practices are fundamental for understanding how a family’s ownership and their leadership of businesses and new entrepreneurship develops.

The purpose of this study is to examine principal succession planning and management by analyzing current practices of handling school leader succession in four Georgia school systems.

Looking through the lens of organizational leadership succession theory, the practices of school systems as they experienced changes in school leadership were examined. Participants included superintendents, assistant superintendents, other central office leaders, and principals. A multiple‐case approach was selected with semi‐structured interviews providing the major source of data.

Findings suggest the following: there is a difference in the sense of urgency for the planning and management of the succession of principals; the development of aspiring leaders was identified as a critical component of planning and management of succession; mentoring was an essential practice through the succession process; and reliance on collaborative partnerships with outside organizations was highly valued.

The implications of the study include a call for further research to determine the differences in leader succession planning and management needs related to the varying contexts. In addition, the study implies that building collaborative partnerships with university preparation programs and other external professional development organizations may assist systems in the planning and management of principal succession.

The originality of this study stems from the lack of literature that directly examines the experiences and practices of principal succession. The findings can inform school system leaders of succession planning and management issues and practices that exist in the four systems studied. As leadership becomes more recognized for its impact on student achievement and school performance, it is imperative that succession is managed and planned to ensure sustainability and effectiveness.

A demographic time bomb is ticking in many school jurisdictions. Up to 70 per cent of present leaders in the private and public sectors will retire within the next five to ten years as the “baby boomers” move on. While succession planning has become a major initiative in the private sector, leadership succession in education tends to hew to old paths. Where are new educational leaders to come from? How should their succession be orchestrated? The traditional source of succession at the secondary level, the department headship, is no longer an attractive route for many teachers. Many potential leaders do not perceive the role of principal or assistant principal in a positive light. These roles are increasingly being associated with managing the standards/standardization agenda with which many professionals profoundly disagree. While it is premature to declare a leadership crisis in education, it is not too early to call on policy makers to attend to the growing need for succession planning at all levels in education. Based on an examination of change over times in four schools in Ontario, this article addresses issues of leadership succession in education and, more precisely, examines the influence of principals’ succession on the principals themselves and their schools.

The purpose of this paper is to argue the importance of succession planning within academic libraries backed up by original research documenting current succession planning practices.

A survey was completed by 34 ARL institutions, which included 25 questions regarding the ages of library leaders, hiring practices, and opinions about the importance and practice of specific succession planning principles. These results are compared with an extensive literature review.

The survey results show that there is a gap between the perceived importance of various principles of succession planning and how well the principles are practiced. In addition, the age demographics of library leaders clearly show a need to prepare future leaders.

From this research it was found that many libraries are not prepared to fill the vacancies of library leadership positions.

This original research provides data that may be lacking within the field in regards to the need for succession planning.

The purpose of this paper is to better understand the development and implementation of shared leadership in multi‐generational family firms. Shared leadership or family top management teams involve multiple family members in the top management and ownership of family firms.

A qualitative case study approach was employed, using in‐depth interviews of the top managers of four family businesses. Each case was analyzed separately, and emergent themes found in each case; and then generalizations were made across the four cases in the cross‐case analysis.

Eight factors or conditions were examined that affect shared leadership in multi‐generational family firms according to the respondents – long‐term orientation, close communication and shared understanding, resistance to change, succession planning, failure to release control, reporting relationship confusion, increased decision time, and higher decision quality. The result of this study is the production of eight propositions to build theory concerning shared leadership, which is an under‐researched area for family business studies.

This paper is rich in qualitative detail, but with all such case study research, its limitations regarding sample size are recognized.

This paper views shared leadership as a growing phenomenon that incumbent family business leaders should consider as a viable alternative to primogeniture or the choice of a single successor.

The study described in this paper is groundbreaking in that it examines shared leadership or the development and implementation of top management teams in family firms in depth and detail. The paper contributes a balanced view of the implementation of shared leadership in family firms, exploring both the positive and negative aspects.

The purpose of this paper is to capture legitimising principles of recent successions to the throne through narrative time. Further, this study considers leaders’ sense-giving to succession.

This research applies a “temporal narrative analysis” to explicate legitimising principles of narrative time in three recent case studies of royal succession: the kingdoms of Spain, Belgium and the Netherlands.

The findings show that royal successions in three modern European constitutional monarchies are legitimised through giving sense to narrative time. The legitimacy of timing succession is embedded in multiple temporal narratives, in which heirs apparent are brought forward as the new generation who will modernise the monarchy.

The paper presents an innovative conceptual framework of sense-giving to succession through narrative time. This framework will be helpful to scholars who aim to grasp legitimising principles of temporal narration in leadership succession.

Organizations often fail to utilize managerial personnel effectively for leadership development and succession planning systems, and many execute these critical practices through separate human resource functions that shift the responsibility for leadership development away from line managers. The purpose of this article is to present a best practices model for optimal development of the leadership pipeline and a series of practical recommendations for organizations.

A group of 30 CEOs and human resource executives across 15 best practice organizations were asked via semi‐structured interviews to describe the content and delivery of their respective organizations' leadership development and succession planning practices.

Analysis of interview data indicated that best practice organizations effectively integrate leadership development and succession planning systems by fully utilizing managerial personnel in developing the organization's mentor network, identifying and codifying high potential employees, developing high potentials via project‐based learning experiences and manager‐facilitated workshops, establishing a flexible and fluid succession planning process, creating organization‐wide forums for exposing high potential employees to multiple stakeholders, and establishing a supportive organizational culture.

The interview data are drawn from a relatively small number of executives and from a single industry, which may limit the overall utility of the findings.

This study offers needed empirical support for the value of integrating leadership development and succession planning practices through utilization of managerial personnel. Management development practitioners will benefit from assessing their respective organizations' current practices vis‐à‐vis those discussed here, while scholars may utilize the best practices model for generating further research on the role of managerial personnel in talent management systems.

Despite the extensive breadth of research into the critical challenge of succession in family business, generational succession in family business has been investigated from predominately one-dimensional perspective. The purpose of this paper is to respond to call for a multi-perspectives examination of leadership succession in order to embrace the dynamic and complex nature of succession in a family business. Accordingly, the authors investigated the key personal and professional factors associated with effective family-business succession across four key stakeholders: incumbent, successor, family, and nonfamily members.

The explanatory research design included 16 interviews in Phase 1 and 41 prospective case study interviews in Phase 2, both with Australian family businesses that had or were about to experience generational transition.

Incumbents and successor interview findings support the benefits of maintaining a cohesive family business, adaptable family culture, and familiness for effective succession. The authors also identified several personal components (e.g. family-business socialization and external experiences) that can help determine the commitment of successors and how this commitment can change once they assume a leadership position. Business size was the professional component supported by incumbent, successor, and nonfamily members as having a significant impact on succession process. As family business grows and becomes more highly complex, a clearly defined set of procedures become imperative.

Family-business practitioners can apply the findings to manage the processes and expectations of family and the business to achieve effective generational succession and thereby increase the sustainability of the business.

This research provides a coherent and comprehensive understanding of the interdependencies of competing priorities in the complex succession process that is essential for family-business sustainability and performance.