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California Community Colleges (CCCs) are facing an ongoing wave of baby boomer retirements that started many years ago and hasnt yet crested. With their retirements comes the potential to lose the "deep smarts" these leaders bring to their organizations, gained through decades of experience. Through the lens of changing workforce demographics, and a dedication to succession planning and knowledge management and transfer, institutions can work to capture some of this organizational history and information before it is lost forever.This qualitative study looks at the first step in this equation - the lived experiences of a select group of individuals as they retired from senior leadership roles within the CCC system. The phenomenological approach allowed for patterns to emerge regarding the knowledge transfer experiences of these leaders both before and after announcing their retirements. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with seven individuals, and upon review of the raw transcription data through the coding process described by Saldaña as "pragmatic eclecticism," three major themes emerged.Each theme encompasses succession planning through knowledge management and transfer within the CCC setting, broken out as follows: 1) Succession Planning as a Process, 2) The Context of Succession Planning, and 3) The Means of Succession Planning. Results flowing from the themes include 1) California Community Colleges need to increase their knowledge of succession planning to move beyond talk to action, 2) Personal career development and retirement journeys have the potential to affect organizational succession planning, 3) Institutional culture, personnel, and politics tend to impact succession planning efforts, and 4) Knowledge transfer is likely to be informal and individually, not organizationally, driven.Recommendations are made for action on the part of both CCCs as a system of unique institutions, and individuals who may seek leadership positions within that system. Recommendations for future research relate to the expansion of the study population and exploration of the CCCs current practices as they relate to succession planning and knowledge management and transfer, including establishment of best practices within the system. Methods chosen for implementation should meet the needs and expectations of the retirees, their peers, and their successors. |
