Succession Planning and Financial Performance: A Resource-Based View Analysis

Abstract

Succession planning (SP) connotes the empowerment of employees with valuable, rare, inimitable, and non-substitutable capabilities that ensure the sustainability and optimisation of organisational performance. This study expands relevant knowledge on the empirical relationship between succession planning and financial performance, and creates a niche within the context of the resource-based view theory. This study is qualitative and explores the resource-based view perspective in understanding the relationship between succession planning and financial performance. This study, via the reviewed empirical literature, observed a heightened positive relationship between SP and the financial performance of organisations. The study concludes by postulating, that the ultimate goals of every organisation are growth, relevance, and sustainability; SP is indispensable to the optimization of these goals as it influences critical performance factors that facilitate the positive continuity and achievement of these goals, hence, succession planning is inevitable for any organisation that is interested in a viable posterity, especially with regards to its financial performance.