Game of Thrones: The Delicate Art of Succession Risk Management
Open Access
- Author:
- Day, Bridget
- Area of Honors:
- Risk Management
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Science
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- David Cather, Thesis Supervisor
David Cather, Thesis Honors Advisor
Lisa Lipowski Posey, Faculty Reader - Keywords:
- succession risk management
succession planning
executive succession
CEO succession
family business succession
risk management
family business
case study - Abstract:
- This thesis analyzes succession risk management in a selected three firms utilizing case study methodology. The firms presented in this case study are Walmart, General Electric, and the Walt Disney Company. This thesis includes a specific focus on familial succession, and the best way to achieve lasting value in a family corporation while still promoting effective and strategic leadership. Additionally, this thesis presents benchmark criteria for which to measure firms’ succession cases. Such criteria were developed by this researcher through intensive literature review. The establishment of such criteria help achieve the goal of this thesis: to ascertain characteristics and fundamental ideologies that are consistent within effective succession planning of familial and non-familial firms, and vice versa. Through the analysis of the three cases previously mentioned against the established benchmark criteria, this researcher found that Walmart, a case of effective succession planning, had present all four criteria of effective planning. The cases of ineffective succession planning, General Electric and the Walt Disney Company, demonstrated less consideration of established criteria which ultimately resulted in poor choices of successors.