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The purpose of this paper is to improve the transition process for key senior executives.

The paper is based on over 25 years of observations regarding effective and ineffective executive transitions.

The author identifies five critical components of successful executive transition: surface and eliminate false assumptions; appoint a transition coordinator; develop a transition plan with the new executive; develop a transition plan with the executive team; and review the plan and metrics with all stakeholders while making any changes needed. The author also points out important transition milestones to be observed in a successful transition; The new executive should assess and choose his team, assess the new organization, articulate a vision for the future and establish open, two‐way communications.

This paper is of value to C‐level executives responsible for hiring staff, senior HR staff and new executives.

The authors contribute to scholarship on motivation for late-career transition, by examining how older executives drew on individual ambidexterity (IA) in the stigmatized, Canadian-licensed recreational cannabis industry.

The methodology utilizes a qualitative method, utilizing semi-structured interviews with 15 late-career executives. Inductive examination of data uncovered subthemes related to motivations for late-career transition, exploring and exploiting competencies, and known and unknown boundary conditions.

Motivations explained the impetus to join, while ambidexterity allowed executives to employ explorative and exploitive competencies to weather boundary conditions. Late-career transitioning to a stigmatized emerging industry presents an unprecedented mode of bridging employment for older workers.

This small exploratory study of a nascent industry is limited in its generalization across different contexts but relevant to others in cannabis and other emerging industries. Increased focus on Human resources management (HRM) related research on late-career transition due to limited studies and IA.

Cannabis can be a risky employment venture for older workers that may affect future job prospects due to stigmatized views or present devastating financial risk. Older workers with knowledge, experience and skill remain relevant utilizing IA and their ability to manage difficult boundary conditions. Older experienced workers can bridge novel new opportunities before retiring.

The authors incorporated IA, expanding on literature related to boundary conditions in the late-career transition of executives into stigmatized recreational Cannabis. The authors introduce a new mode of bridge employment for late-career workers.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a model that can explain how organizations may retain their executives’ tacit knowledge in the organization especially during the succession period. The proposed model takes into consideration three critical contexts that may assist in improving the knowledge flow during the transition period, namely, motivation context, transition context and ability context.

This paper presents a conceptual framework that emphasizes the importance of the will and skill of two parties involved in succession, i.e. the predecessor and successor, as well as the context of the succession. To this end, the paper advances a set of propositions that explain how these different contexts affect the quantity and quality of the knowledge acquired by the successor at the end of the succession period.

This paper advances a theoretical model that describes the antecedents and moderator of job-specific knowledge acquired during executive succession.

This paper presents a theoretical model that explains knowledge flow during the transitory period of succession. It emphasizes the importance of the motivation and ability of the partners involved while taking into consideration the context of succession.

This paper contributes considerably and in a practical manner to managers in general and to human resource managers in particular. It draws the attention of concerned managers to check the motivation of both successor and predecessor in experiencing the transition, explain to the successors the job description of the position to direct their attention to learn specific knowledge and equip both parties involved in the succession with the needed skills.

This paper advances a new concept termed as accelerated engaged tacit knowledge acquisition. This concept complements other perspectives of knowledge flow and learning and takes into consideration the specific context of executive succession.

This chapter estimates a dynamic reduced-form model of intra-firm promotions using an employer–employee panel of over 300 of the largest corporations in the United States in the period from 1981 to 1988. The estimation conditions on unobserved individual heterogeneity and allows for both an endogenous initial condition and sample attrition linked to individual heterogeneity in demonstrating the relative importance of variables that influence promotion. The role of the executive’s functional area in promotion is considered along with the existence and source of promotion fast tracks. We find that while the principal determinant of promotions is unobserved individual heterogeneity, functional area has a high explanatory power, resulting in promotion probabilities that differ by functional area for executives at the same reporting level and firm. No evidence is found that an executive’s recent speed of advancement in pay grade has a positive causal impact on in-sample promotions after conditioning on the executive’s career speed of advancement, except for the lowest level executives the data. Fast tracks appear to largely result from heterogeneity in persistent individual characteristics, not from an inherent benefit in recent advancement itself.

The literature on midlife transformation indicates that many Chinese executives seem to be experiencing “midlife crisis” and at a younger age than observed in Westerners. This chapter suggests that such phenomena are less chronologically aged based and more related to how individuals are perceiving, understanding, and reacting to the changing cultural and role contexts they are interacting with in rapidly modernizing China. Kegan's constructive-developmental theory of an individual's meaning-making provides a conceptual basis for better understanding of how mid-career Chinese business executives working in multinational firms are dealing with the complexity and speed of change in China. This chapter discusses Kegan's theory as well as some of the literature on midlife crisis and then applies those insights to executive coaching through a recent Chinese executive coaching case.

The paper aims to investigate the imprinting effect on working capital (WC) management as higher-level managers' transition to chief executive officer (CEO) positions. This paper proposes that WC management defined as a shorter cash conversion cycle (CCC) can be carried forward to the new firm when the managers are appointed as a CEO.

The authors employ a multivariate regression approach. The data in this study come from two sources: Execucomp which provides data for corporate managers of the largest 2,000 USA firms including S&P 1,500 US and Compustat which provides financial information of firms.

The authors find a positive imprinting effect of “new” CEOs on WC outcomes – proxied by the CCC. CCC shortens by approximately 16 days when CEOs are efficient managers at previous institutions, predominantly derived from improvements in inventory and payables. The effect is sensitive to individuals' age, familiarity with the industry and high-pressure circumstances.

The paper includes important implications of WC management for firms to consider, especially during economic crises when liquidity management is a priority.

This paper extends the literature on the imprinting effect on managerial decision-making. The paper offers evidence of cooperative yet dynamic efforts in managing WC during CEO turnover events, which are unique findings.

This study focused on the issue of CEO tenure in three non‐profit community‐based organizations – each with an at least 25‐year long CEO tenure – located in two US northeastern urban centers. Using a questionnaire and a semi‐structured interview, we investigated reasons for the CEOs’ extraordinarily long tenures in office: the CEOs themselves, their organizations, and the environments in which they operated. The following were among the data findings re the CEOs: they were founders of their organization; were power brokers within the political community; managed their staff and boards of directors; possessed a vision and continued to initiate new projects; exhibited a passion for work; and had a succession plan. Some issues for future research are presented.

Describes the approach to replacement and succession planning successfully used by the human resource function of a Canadian packaging group. The approach is based on the evaluation of seven essential behavioural characteristics for managers as criteria separately for replacement (today) and succession (three to five years on). Advocates the development of both generic and job‐focused behavioural competences and the institutionalization of succession/replacement planning.

Management games arose on the scene in the late 1950s and were derived from World War II simulations. Since then, they have grown in use and can be found in most major companies and in most colleges or universities. They provide an experiential framework for learning and applying concepts learned, add interest and even excitement to the classroom and provide a risk free environment for learning.

Although outplacement consulting and career transition services have become a standard management practice and are almost universally provided when terminating executives, these services have not been carefully evaluated and their benefits are not clearly understood. The purpose of this paper is to consider the role of individual differences in determining outplacement success using the Big Five framework as measured by the occupational personality questionnaire (OPQ).

The behavior of a sample of 53 executives was examined during outplacement as well as their success following reemployment.

The study's hypotheses were largely supported with agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness to experience making a significant contribution to the understanding of outplacement effectiveness both during and after the transition.

These results suggest that providers should assess individual differences as part of career transition counseling and question recent trends toward making outplacement a commodity service. They also suggest that the diagnostic and counseling skills of a trained professional help to secure a successful outplacement experience and that the process should recognize the unique needs and personality of individual clients.

This paper considers the behavior of actual executives in career transition. It also extends previous research on the Big Five typology to executive outplacement and provides evidence of the usefulness of the OPQ as a measure of these personality traits.