Riparian areas connect terrestrial and aquatic environments. The objectives of this research were to compare the vegetation community composition and structure eight years after harvesting and to explore successional trends among buffer widths at year eight after disturbance and in a chronosequence. A series of small clearcuts were harvested in 1998 in a 70 year old second growth stand at the Malcolm Knapp Research Forest and 0m, 10m and 30m reserve zones were established adjacent to the streams. Each treatment was replicated 3 times and 3 unharvested streams were identified as controls. Overstory and understory vegetation was measured annually from the year of harvest. Canopy density was measured using a densiometer. For comparative purposes, four vegetation plots were added in riparian areas within an 1868 and an old-growth stand during the summer of 2006. Eight years after harvesting, understory vegetation development is affected by buffer width due to higher light levels, and species richness in the 10m and 0m buffers is higher than in the 30m buffer and control. Shrubs and deciduous trees dominate the 0m and 10m buffer treatments. Proximity to the stream does not affect the composition and abundance of species with the exception of herbs and mosses. In the 10m and 30m buffer treatments, up to 15% overstory trees were windthrown in the first 2 years after harvest producing large canopy gaps. Consequently, the understory development in the 10m and 30m buffers is more like that in the 1868 and old-growth stands than in the controls, but these treatments still lack the very large trees and microsite heterogeneity of the older stands. In the unharvested controls, self-thinning continues and there has been 30% mortality of mostly smaller trees over the past 8 years. However, overstory density remains high. The 0m buffer was quickly colonized by shrubs and ferns and within the last 2 years has become dominated by juvenile deciduous trees. Overall, the 10m buffer balances timber production with the maintenance of overstory and understory structure dynamics. The combined effect of light from the edge and partial windthrow is accelerating succession towards a more mature or ‘old-growth’ condition. / Forestry, Faculty of / Graduate

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Background: CEO succession is a critical process in organizations, marked by its potential for disruption andstrategic changes. CEO succession can significantly influence corporate strategy, with the CEOwielding considerable power in shaping organizational direction. As part of corporate strategy,internationalization is considered one of the most important future priorities in many familybusinesses. It holds the potential to help those businesses survive in an increasingly competitivebusiness environment while also maintaining the business for generations to come. As the CEOsuccession entrusts a new person with a role that can have a significant influence oninternationalization, the challenge is to ensure that this person not only follows financial goalsin internationalization but also balances non-financial goals. This is because family businessesgenerally attach great importance to SEW, which are non-financial attributes. An influence ofthe CEO successor on internationalization that is not in line with the SEW could therefore beundesirable for the family businesses. Hence, choosing an appropriate CEO becomes crucial. Purpose: This study aims to examine how CEO succession influences the internationalization of familybusinesses. The study intends to contribute to the current literature by investigating theindividual influence of CEO successors on internationalization, offering both theoreticalinsights and practical implications. By identifying the diverse outcomes associated withdifferent succession types, this research intends to support family businesses to better predictand anticipate the consequences of CEO succession and internationalization. Method: The methodology of this study follows an ontological relativism approach, meaning weacknowledge that multiple truths exist. This further aligns with our epistemological stance onsocial constructionism. The basis of our master thesis is built on a qualitative study followingan inductive approach to generate new theories arising from the empirical data collected.Therefore, we conducted an exploratory interview study and analyzed the acquired dataaccording to the Gioia method. The sampling of our interviewees was done purposively byincluding predefined selection criteria. Conclusion: This paper examines how CEO succession in family businesses affects their internationalizationstrategies, considering successors from within the family, internal employees, and externalhires. It was found that all types of successors can influence internationalization, yet withvarying outcomes as a result. Intra-family successors, while not necessarily having a greaterinfluence on the board, often align with family values, leading to continuity in internationalstrategy. Internal employee successors tend to maintain existing strategies, benefiting fromfirm-specific knowledge, while external successors may bring about strategic changes due totheir outside perspectives and lack of familiarity with the family culture. Various factors caneither reverse or strengthen the successors' influence on internationalization.

<p>Individual level factors related to the successor have a central role to play in the succession process of the business. When these factors are viewed in relation to succession planning models, these factors have a direct relation to the succession models in terms of success or failure of the succession process. The major contributing factor to the success or failure of the succession process is that of the leadership provided to the organization by the predecessor. These leadership qualities change from one form to another during different phases of the succession planning models.</p>

LL.D. / Please refer to full text to view abstract

Individual level factors related to the successor have a central role to play in the succession process of the business. When these factors are viewed in relation to succession planning models, these factors have a direct relation to the succession models in terms of success or failure of the succession process. The major contributing factor to the success or failure of the succession process is that of the leadership provided to the organization by the predecessor. These leadership qualities change from one form to another during different phases of the succession planning models.

This dissertation is an exploration, development and application of a theory on the effects of managerial succession on organizational performance in the public sector. Public management is a field of study within public administration that is gaining momentum and is strengthening both its theoretical and empirical bases. In this dissertation I build upon the very small literature on managerial (or executive) succession to develop a theory of the effects of managerial succession on performance. I posit that in the short-term performance will decrease; however, over time organizations that have had a succession event will see an increase in performance. I employ the use of three unique datasets: Texas school district superintendents, British local education authorities, and Major League Baseball field managers. All datasets have particular strengths that allow for a more complete empirical analysis. What we find is that, while there appears to be no significant relationship between managerial succession and performance in the year following the succession event, there is a positive and significant event over time. Furthermore, in the British analysis, which is designed to test a similar organization to the Texas analysis yet in a vastly different organizational structure, we find no significant relationship between performance and succession.