Factors inhibiting the effectiveness of succession planning in the University of Dar es Salaam.

Succession planning plays an indispensable role in ensuring continuity of any work organization because it guarantees a balanced supply of the most important resource any organization cannot survive without it i.e. human resources. In due regard succession planning as an ongoing process helps an organization to align its business goals and its human capital needs. It also ensures that an organization keeps pace with changes in its operating environment and can be able to meet the future demands of business. This study focused on academic staff succession planning in UDSM, which aims at identifying and developing long-term successors in the teaching workforce. It is advocated to be good HRM practice to have a formal and effective succession planning that is aimed to ensure a smooth transition and effective continuity of work organization generation after generation. The research findings indicates that at UDSM there is no formal academic staff succession planning, rather there is an informal succession planning organised in most cases at faculty or departmental level, also the study showed that all departments at UDSM have shortages in their actual manpower demands. It is worth noting that good supply of successors will not emerge without the entire UDSM management taking deliberate and pro- active process of succession planning that is aimed to ensure that career development of successors takes place. UDSM needs to regard succession planning as a broad process that relates the current human resources supply and successors to the future needs.