Smooth Transitions: An Examination of Succession Planning and Leadership Continuity among Directors and Associate Directors of the Potomac Conference Corporation of Seventh-day Adventists

Far too many organizations fall short of the strategic task of succession planning. The absence of satisfactory solutions in this area stifles the ability of an organization to achieve its mission and vision. Lack of planning in this area also contributes to a negative impact on overall morale, staff performance, and effectiveness as these turnovers ensue. The purpose of this thesis project is to explore the perceived absence of intentional succession planning and leadership transitioning among director and associate director-level leadership positions within the Potomac Conference Corporation of Seventh-day Adventists. In this project, surveys and one-on-one interviews are conducted among employee leaders in the workforce to assess the perception of turnover among these critical positions, along with the perceived implications of these transitions on mission and vision achievement at the local level. Also surveyed are human resources personnel from a sample of surrounding conferences to explore the prevalence or lack of prevalence of strategic succession planning among Seventh-day Adventist Conferences. The desired outcome will be the creation of a succession planning document, supported by precedent literature and scripture, which will aid and assist conference administration and hiring managers in filling vacant roles in. Best practices for strategic succession planning will be followed and referenced. Additional conferences may use this resource in filling vacancies and in achieving their stated missions and visions

The valuation of European financial firms

We extend the recent literature concerning accounting based valuation models to investigate financial firms from six European countries with substantial financial sectors: France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Switzerland and the UK. Not only are these crucial industries worthy of study in their own right, but unusual accounting practices, and inter-country differences in those accounting practices, provide valuable insights into the accounting-value relationship. Our sample consists of 7,714 financial firm/years observations from 1,140 companies drawn from 1989-2000. Sub-samples include 1,309 firm/years for banks, 650 for insurance companies, 1,705 for real estate firms, and 3,239 for investment companies. In most countries we find that the valuation models work as well or better in explaining cross-sectional variations in the market-to-book ratio for financial firms as they do for industrial and commercial firms in the same countries, although Switzerland is an exception to this generalization. As expected, the results are sensitive to industrial differences, accounting regulation and accounting practices. In particular, marking assets to market value reduces the relevance of earnings figures and increases that of equity