Succession in Italian nonprofits: A survey

The issue of executive succession has received some attention in recent years (Santora, Sarros and Bauer, 2008). Major reviews of the literature have revealed inconsistent or mixed findings. Moreover, executive succession in nonprofit human service organizations has, for the most part, focused on the findings of regional surveys and the use of the case method (Santora, Sarros 1995, 2007). Such research suggests that when it comes to executive succession issues nonprofits have some major challenges. For example, most nonprofits do not plan for executive succession, do not have boards of directors who make executive succession a priority issue, and do not have internal staff with the capacity nor do staff have the desire to lead their organizations (Santora, Sarros 2001; Santora, Sarros and Caro 2007). Add to this the fact that many nonprofits have high turnover rates among their executives, which further complicates matters and unfortunately can lead to major disruptions in the delivery of human services to needy constituents (Santora, Sarros and Clemens 1997). The paper analyzes, for the first time in Italy, data from a national research project about nonprofit executive succession. It will be possible to illustrate data regarding the socio-demographic characteristics, the roles and functions, the carriers and the succession plan of Italian nonprofit executives. Several international research have found that the succession process in nonprofit organizations is difficult. Because of the peculiarities of third sector organizations and social enterprises often they do not deal, in a systemic way, with the renewal of their leaders. These are often the founders of the organizations and the actual charismatic leaders and these elements are a burden for the successors. The exit of Heads of the Board (Presidents) or CEOs (Directors) usually doesn’t involve the internal upgrade of "second in charge" but it ends with the cooptation of external staff. The survey is based on a CATI personal interview with 200 CEOs of Italian nonprofit organizations. The sample has been selected from a population of social cooperatives, foundations and pro-social associations with a certain number of paid staff (different for each typology of organization), utilizing a data base of the Italian National Statistic Institute (ISTAT).