Nonprofit Executive Succession Planning and Organizational Sustainability. A Preliminary Comparative Study in Australia, Brazil, Israel, Italy, Russia, and the United States

The aim of this article is to compare the extent to which nonprofits have planned for executive director succession in six different countries. The article compares the data from the survey findings of six recently published articles that used the same questionnaire in Australia, Brazil, Israel, Italy, Russia, and the United States. The article focuses on succession planning and executive selection issues (formal versus informal planning and insider-outsider selection) and provides demographic comparisons of the respondents. Implications for managing sustainable organizations include the need to be attentive to strategic priorities so as to anticipate and deal with the expected and unexpected departures of incumbents. Limitations such as convenience samples are noted as are recommendations for future research.