Identification of Individuals for Directorship Roles: Evaluation of a University’s Succession Management

Abstract

Identification of potential individuals for leadership roles is a critical aspect of a succession management programme, as other aspects of the programme depend on an effective identification. This study evaluates how the University of Cape Coast (UCC) in Ghana identifies potential non-academic senior members for directorship roles. We collected qualitative data through in-depth interviewing of nine directors at the university. We analysed the data using constant comparison analysis by developing three themes, under each of which we presented similar categories of data. We found that the criteria for identification of potential directors include seniority; both internal and external sources; and familiarity with the culture, the legal framework, and the higher educational system. We conclude that UCC does not operate a structured, formal succession management but fills leadership vacancies through the traditional recruitment and selection method, an all-inclusive approach which we argue is not suitable for identifying and developing potential individuals for leadership positions.

Talent Management of Academics: A Systematic Literature Review and Implications for Further Research in Hungary

“…The first problem we encountered when wanting to conduct this research was regarding the operationalization of 'academics'. Some of the examined sources (e.g., van Balen, van Arensbergen, van Der Weijden, & van Den Besselaar, 2012;van den Brink et al, 2013) refer to teaching and research staff as academics, some (e.g., Barginere, Franco, & Wallace, 2013;Oppong & Oduro-Asabere, 2018) include university support staff as well, while others (e.g., Erasmus, Naidoo, & Joubert, 2017;O'Bryan & Casey, 2017) do not really specify what they mean when they speak about, for instance, "all university staff" (Lim & Boey, 2013) or "faculty members" (Eghbal, Hoveida, Seyadat Seyedali, Samavatiyan, & Yarmokhammadian, 2017). Fig.…”

“…As shown in Tab. 3, most of the articles mentioned managerial/leadership talents only (Badia, 2015;O'Bryan & Casey, 2017;Palmer et al, 2015;Rayburn et al, 2016), while others contained both managerial talents and high potentials (Barginere et al, 2013;Oppong & Oduro-Asabere, 2018), or managerial talents and intern talents (Peet et al, 2010). Van Balen et al…”

“…There was no consensus in the examined articles on the subjects of TM. Some sources (e.g., van Balen et al, 2012;van den Brink et al, 2013) referred to teaching and research staff as academics and academic talents, some (e.g., Barginere et al, 2013;Oppong & Oduro-Asabere, 2018) included university support staff as well, while others (e.g., Erasmus et al, 2017;O'Bryan & Casey, 2017) did not really specify what they mean when they spoke about for instance "all university staff" (Lim & Boey, 2013) or "faculty members" (Eghbal et al, 2017) as the employees participating in TM. We presented the theoretical possibilities (Fig.…”

A Thematic Approach to Succession Planning, Leadership Continuity, and Organizational Growth: Spotlight on Chief Executive Officers in Ghanaian Industry

“…Within the industries that practised SP, grooming the best employee to take up this key role was easier. This has been confirmed by Zhang & Rajagopolan (2004) who stated that well-groomed internal candidates or relay successors have a good impact on the firm's growth as opposed to external non-relay replacements (Oppong & Oduro-Asabere, 2018;Giacomara et al, 2021).…”

The Modeling of Succession Management in the Faculty Members of Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences: A Grounded Theory

“…The strategies resulting from the deployment of succession management may be influenced by various underlying conditions, which have been addressed in the previous studies in this regard. For instance, internal and external resources and familiarity with the culture, laws, and framework of higher education have been introduced by Oppong and Oduro-Asabere as the potential criteria for the identification of senior managers (24). Furthermore, factors such as accreditation requirements, curriculum development, educational strategies, and educational needs have been addressed by Tucker (25), while a succession management model has been reported based on the mentoring model (26,27).…”