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The purpose of this paper is to explore the under-researched family-external business succession process. It makes use of entrepreneurship theory in order to conceptualize this temporal process. This allows for an operationalization of entrepreneurial functions and tracking them during the two main phases of such processes. This study provides a starting point for further endeavors into researching family-external succession processes.

This paper is based on an explorative, quasi-longitudinal, qualitative and multiple case-study approach. It became possible to create trust with stakeholders in three family firms and to conduct face-to-face interviews with a total of 12 interviewees, generating over 300 transcript pages. The case interviews were validated through two expert interviews. A priori research propositions were tested and modified, if deemed necessary.

Entrepreneurial functions during the two main phases of the process seem to be carried out and aligned depending on several influencing factors: delegation of responsibilities from owner-managers to qualified employees; incumbent owner-managers being heavily involved in the succession’s facilitation and neglecting some entrepreneurial functions; and as a result new owner-managers being forced to prioritize certain functions in the second phase.

This paper benefits from a rather unique access to three family firms undergoing succession in the DACH-region. Therefore, it became possible to study the family-external succession process by including various stakeholders involved. Such an inclusion of perspectives has been suggested by family business scholars for a long time.

Family firms account for around 75 per cent of all business enterprises in the UK, but there is a lack of research on these businesses. The family firms literature recognises that there are differences between family and non‐family businesses; differences that can be explained by conflicts between a juxtaposition of family values and business values. Consequently, family firms tend to have different approaches to ownership and control, the composition of boards, employment practices, strategy formulation and succession management. This paper reports on the demographic characteristics, ownership configurations, boardroom arrangements, managerial and succession practices of a random selection of 1,065 family firms located in Scotland and Northern Ireland. Results reveal that the firms are well‐established, privately owned, small businesses in which the lead family retains almost all shares and dominates the board of directors. These firms give some preferential treatment to family members in employment and managerial matters but business objectives are not ignored. In keeping with previous research, succession matters are not regularly discussed and much more needs to be done to allow for a smooth transition from one family generation to another. The authors conclude by arguing that there is an urgent need for policy makers to address the problems and needs of small family firms and to develop frameworks and practices for assisting these businesses.

The aim of this paper is to examine the long‐term abnormal returns of firms that have experienced chief executive officer (CEO) succession. According to Chief Executive magazine, directors rank CEO succession as the second most important issue their firms face, the first being strategic planning.

This study examines 202 CEO succession announcements. It utilizes two returns‐generating models to calculate abnormal returns for two estimation windows of 200 trading days before and after the succession event.

The results support the theory first developed by Guest (1962) that succession is an adaptive event. Specifically, this study shows that firms that experience a CEO change have positive abnormal returns, suggesting that new CEOs raise the firm performance. Moreover, this study shows that firms that experience CEO change due to CEO retirement improve firm performance in the post‐succession period, whereas succession due to CEO sudden death or illness seems to have no direct effect on the long‐term performance of these firms. Finally, this study provides strong evidence that outside successions help firms raise performance more than inside successions.

Like any empirical event‐study, the validity of the results depends on the absence of confounding events. Future research could be to explore the relationship between the information content of the CEO succession announcement and the market reaction.

This paper is believed to be the first attempt to empirically examine the relation between CEO turnover and long‐term firm performance through the analysis of the successor's origin and of the force initiating the change, by using an event study methodology.

The purpose of this paper is to critically review the part of the leader succession literature which is based on coach turnover in sport teams. The aim of this paper is to assess the state of the art and the relevance of this literature for sport management and further research.

A comprehensive reading of the extant scientific literature and a critical assessment of its conceptual and methodological foundations.

The assumptions guiding the coach succession are not based on insights about the idiosyncrasies of team sport and its management. These flaws render the research findings of the research dubious and leave us with little reliable information of what influence coaches have on their teams and what the impact is of the high turnover of head coaches in professional team sport.

Leader succession research in sport is heavily flawed because it has not been informed by qualitative studies exploring the contextual conditions under which the coaches work. It follows that qualitative studies of the impact of coaches is highly wanted. Furthermore, the generalization from findings in sport across other spheres of social life should be addressed with caution because sport is much more idiosyncratic than has been assumed in the coach succession literature.

This is the first review of the leader succession literature from a sport management perspective. It provides a profound critique of the research on coach succession in team sport.

This paper aims to evaluate the impact of a mid‐season change of manager on the sporting performance of professional football teams in the First Division of the Spanish Football League.

In team sports, the manager takes important decisions that affect the sporting performance of the team. Although the manager is normally hired for a period of at least one season, clubs frequently change managers halfway through that period. Before taking that decision, the Board of Directors probably ask themselves: “Do we sack the manager … or is it better not to?” Data envelopment analysis (DEA) techniques are used to compare the performance of a group of teams that have changed their manager mid‐season to that of teams that have stuck with the same manager for the entire season.

The main result is that a mid‐season change of manager improves sporting performance, but it does not allow to perform as well as teams that have not changed managers halfway through the season.

Changing managers can be a good move when a football team is not performing well. However, club executives would be recommended to plan the season well beforehand to avoid finding themselves in a situation where they must change managers halfway through.

The foremost contribution of this paper to the existing literature in this field of research is the computation of programme efficiency scores with DEA techniques to deal with the analysis of the effect of a change of manager on the performance of football teams.

Coaches from both the professional and college ranks are often put forth as archetypal examples of effective leaders – individuals’ whose behaviors, styles, and wisdom provide the ever elusive playbook for how to successfully lead others. While numerous books and articles in the popular press put forth advice from leaders in the sports world, numerous empirical studies of the drivers of successful sports leadership and the factors that contribute to leader success in the context of sports have also been conducted. In this chapter, we first provide a broad review of empirical leadership research conducted within the sports world and examine how research within the sports context provides a suitable and advantageous setting for leadership research in general. Second, we offer a road map of opportunities for future leadership studies within the context of sports. The goal of this chapter is to stimulate and rally more thought-provoking research related to leadership in sports that generates insights for organizational leadership across contexts.

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.

The aim of this paper is to investigate CEO succession in China's state‐owned enterprises (SOE) from within intra‐industry labor market. One hypothesis looks at the proportion of SOEs in the industry which will be negatively associated with the likelihood of intra‐firm succession. Another proposition claims the performance gap between SOEs and the industry average level is positively related to the likelihood of intra‐firm succession.

Secondary source data on 79 CEO successions and descriptive company measures were obtained. Background variables such as ROA and employee number were collected from the Tianjin Statistical Yearbook. Pearson and logistic regression coefficients provided tests of hypotheses.

The hypotheses are strongly supported given all measures of performance. The likelihood of intra‐firm succession is negatively associated with the proportion of SOEs in a particular industry. The lower the performance of SOEs behind the industry average level, the greater the likelihood of intra‐firm succession.

The sample size used is moderate. Even though Tianjin is a large industrial center, generalizations to all of China may be limited.

The results support the overall argument that firms within a gradualist economic transition environment in China will tend to choose an internal CEO succession when firms have a limited qualified managerial supply outside the organization. Future research examining the CEO successor in both SOEs and non‐SOEs will provide a more complete picture of organization management with transitional economies evolving into the largest world‐leading economies.

The data base is unique. The paper looks at the business activities and management processes of China's SOEs for the purpose of understanding the way leadership develops; and the organizational effect it has on top management succession. The research not only contributes to the succession literature but also enables managers and investors to better understand the practice of top management succession in Chinese SOEs.

In this article a definition of “succession planning” is given, outlining the potential benefits and problems of implementing a succession‐planning programme in a health service organisation, and factors critical for the success of such a programme are discussed. A case study is presented of one large health service organisation which recently implemented a succession‐planning programme. In this case study, a brief overview is given of the organisational setting, the philosophy and objectives of the programme are outlined and the programme′s implementation and early outcomes are described.

Succession planning concerns the selection of talented employees to replace senior managers who leave the firm because of retirement, reassignment, or other reasons. Effective succession planning emphasizes minimizing disruption and dislocation arising from such personnel changes, with a view to implementing business strategy and achieving organizational goals in a smooth and continuous manner. Although succession planning is an essential requirement for the long‐term development and success of business enterprises, previous studies have rarely investigated the empirical relationship between succession programs and human resource outcomes. This study employs empirical data collected from business firms in Taiwan to address that question.