Leadership SuccessionStewart D. Friedman This volume focuses on the most critical strategic activity in any organization, namely, who gets chosen to sit in the top echelon of the pyramid. Friedman argues that it is the quality of corporate leadership that will determine corporate winners and losers in the global competitive game. The stakes in leadership succession are high. The selection of key figures is the one human resource activity that no one belittles for being of secondary importance. Indeed, leadership succession is so important and central in many executive minds that it crowds out any other work. The succession process is often fraught with political intrigue, it lacks discipline, and excludes meaningful involvement of senior human resource executives. The contributors to this imaginative volume reveal a succession planning process that is frequently sloppy, superficial, and regularly sabotaged by senior management when they give it short shrift in terms of quality time. In addition, senior management often overrides sound decisions when it comes to filling key positions. The result is a lack of integrity throughout the human resource systems that eventually leads to a collapse of belief in the system and its governance. Noel M. Tichy, a leading figure in the studies of human resource management, has said, "Stewart Friedman is to be congratulated for a successful effort in providing a state of the art look at leadership succession. [He] provides us with an empirical database of what is happening in U.S. corporations, helpful prescriptions for future improvement of leadership succession, and a realistic assessment of the human resource executive challenges in this area." |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
Academy of Management activities adaptability Argyris behavior business strategy candidates CEO concerns chief executive client corporate strategy COWHERD criteria critical decisions dimension discussion dynamic contexts effective environment environmental environmental scans executive development executive learning executive search executive succession experience formal Friedman function future Gupta Harvard Business Review Human Resource Management human resource reviews individual industry internal involved KORN Korn/Ferry leaders leadership succession major Management Journal managerial managers to strategies markets matching managers ment OASIS Organization one's organization organization's organizational change Organizational culture organizational life cycle organizational performance outcomes percent personal learning planning process political positions potential problems programs replacement planning responsibility retirement role Ruth Gordon SBUS search firm selection senior executive sion skills staff stage Strategic Management strategic planning succes succession events succession planning succession process succession systems successor task learning tegic tion tive top management Wall Street Journal workers