Designing a Model for Integrating Succession and Career Planning of the Managers of Iranian Public Universities

This research has been conducted to design a model for integrating succession planning and career planning in Iranian Public Universities via the viewpoints of higher education managers and elites, based on the systematic design of Strauss and Corbin’s Grounded Theory method.
Therefore, using the purposive sampling method, 15 interviewees including universities’ executive and middle managers, authors in aforementioned field, key informants in the fields of human resource management and higher education were interviewed through semi-structured interviews, and data were extracted from the interviews. Data were analyzed through three steps of coding (open, axial and selective).
Findings: The result was 25 core categories placed in a paradigmatic model consisting of the approaches of establishing an integration model (Familiarization, Participation, Organizational learning, Trust-Making, Forethought, Academic Autonomy, and Systemic vision), environmentally intervening conditions (political, Circumstantial, Socio-cultural, International, Legal and policy-making environments), contextual properties (Organizational structure, Organizational climate and culture, Managerial consistency, Resistance against change), causal conditions (Talent pool, Efficient promotion system, Human resource management, Integrating succession planning and career planning, Organizational advocacy of individual attempts, Professionalism), main phenomenon (Meritocracy), and outcomes (Individual and organizational outcomes). This model portrays the implementing process of the model for integrating succession planning and career planning Iranian Public Universities’ and the relations within categories and their dimensions.