Strategic Succession Planning and Performance Among Law Firms in Nairobi City County, Kenya

Abstract

The ability of many firms to survive beyond the peer group or the three stages of life has been a challenging undertaking for most business units and private firms. The cause of these declining endurance rates is the inability of the firms to create the necessary reserves to sustain the current level of operations as the company matures. One of the strategies being adopted by firms to guarantee the sustainability of their operations now into the foreseeable future is the establishment of a succession plan. This strategy applies not only on business oriented organization but also private entities. The sought to determine the impact of the strategic succession planning on the law firms performance in the county government of Nairobi. The specific objectives were to specifically establish the impact of career management, employee retention and management support instituted by the firms and its particular impact on the performance of the law firms under research. Towards the realization of the objectives, the research adopted descriptive as well as the cross sectional design of the research with the population target being all the 980 registered law firms in 17 sub-counties in Nairobi. In selecting the target sample, the study employed systematic sampling design. The research work made an adoption of the descriptive type of study. The research findings were that majority of the law firms had established succession planning processes at different levels with those older firms having entrenched the same more in their operations compared to the younger. The study found out that the career management promotes employee insight, goal and strategy development. Further, career management improves employees’ organizational commitment levels which resulted in improved customer satisfaction, improves employee and efficiency, lead to cost reduction and risk management as well as reduced uncertainties on the firm internal structures and external relationship. In general, management support came out as the strongest variable that influences the performance of the law firms. The study concludes that a lack of effective succession planning among the young law firms does not augur well for the business continuity of the said firms and therefore necessitating the need to have a functioning human resource and strategy units in the law firms so that they can develop and implement an effective succession planning process in the organizations.