Leadership Succession: What Can We Learn from the National Hockey League?

In the study conducted, the authors use a model in which they predict and test for positive, neutral and negative effects on National Hockey League (NHL) teams with previous-season, between-season and within season successions of general managers and coaches. While their study addresses successions in NHL teams, their findings have clear implications for other business organizations. The authors found that control variables aside, in the case of coaches and general managers, a team's performance was related to the particular pattern of succession. Supplemented by a case study on General Dynamics, the authors conclude that long-term performance should improve when new managers have the opportunity to experience how things work in the organization before making changes. If successors are not been given chance to evaluate performance when resources are being taxed, they may make changes that do not use the organization's resources effectively. Furthermore, after a departmental managerial change, senior managers may have to tolerate short-term results while the new manager gains firsthand experience of how the team functions under pressure. The author suggests that senior managers facilitate the opportunity for a between-season period in which the successor can work through the appropriate changes with the departmental team while continuously questioning whether the contracts of lower-level managers correspond to long-term performance gains rather than short-term results.