Succession Planning And Succession Elements' Influence On Succession Performance

With the development of globalization, talent is becoming the most important factor for the company to keep its competitive advantage. How to ensure a stable supply of talented employees by effective succession planning management has become the most important content of the company's strategy. In this study, we made an investigation on the succession management practice in Chinese companies, analyzed the factors that influence the execution of succession planning and explored the relationships among succession planning, process and performance. The study could be divided into two stages, in the first stage, we made the preparation work and had a general understanding of the succession concept and succession planning management by interview and questionnaires. In the second stage, we investigated 164 managers in 27 companies located in Beijing, Shanghai, Zhen Zhou, Luoyang, Guangzhou and Hangzhou.The results indicated: (1)succession planning is influenced by a variety of factors including the nature of the company, the field, the scale of the company, how many years it has been established and whether it is family controlled;(2)The succession planning have 4 dimensions including formalization, resource allocation, process controlment and selection criteria;(3) The succession is a process of elements transference, not only the explicit elements, but also the implicit elements. (4) The elements transference will influence the quality and efficiency of the succession. (5)There exists an interaction between the explicit element transference and the implicit element transference. (6)The willingness of the ex-leader and the successor will also influence the results of the succession.Finally, we analyzed the relationship among the succession planning, process and results, along with the deficiency of the study, we also made a suggestion for further study.