The effects of organizational culture on implementation of succession planning: case studies of two GLCs

Abstract

Succession planning is perhaps one of the most discussed topics today as a result of compensation, development and implementation. Global organizations faced with fastpaced change can no longer afford long, lengthy internal development of an heir apparent. However, those organizations who seek faster, external executive hires have found it no solution as organizational culture often trumps talent and industry experience. The organization’s capacity for learning is the key to long-term success as recent research points to those who do internal succession well, with little disruption and ready change depend on the ability to execute plans (Charan & Colvin, 1999, 2001). A qualitative research design was adopted. In qualitative research, the researcher is the research instrument (Taylor, S. J. & Bogdan, 1998) and the primary data were collected using an interview method. Five respondents from the two participating companies, namely Company A and Company B were selected as the sample to represent the population. The results of this research found that both of the companies have adopted succession planning and implemented the process according to their own unique cultures. It is also found that organizational culture does influence the implementation of succession planning in both companies.