What are the advantages and disadvantages associated with promoting internally to a leadership pocition?

That's possibly rather a big topic. But a brief answer would be the following fairly obvious points... Internal candidate pros... - Knows the business of the organization well - The org can be pretty confident it correctly understands the qualities of the person - The person probably has a network of relationships in place already which enables them to be effective Internal candidate cons... - They may possibly lead to the org doing "more of the same" - They may be subject to the groupthink and the established woldview of the org - They have less symbolic value as a sign that things have changed External candidate pros and cons are the mirror image of those. Pros - Can be a strong signal of a new start for an org that has been in difficulties - Can bring fresh thinking and an outsider perspective - Free from preconceptions and emotional attachments to existing projects and people Cons - May not have deep knowledge of the org or even its business sector - May not succeed in building relationships that are needed to be effective - They may not be as good as they appeared from the publicly known info about them There have been plenty of good examples of extremely successful leaders that were promoted internally and also those who came from outside, and there are examples in every type of situation.So generalizations are probably not that useful.

For example: Internal candidate who shook things up radically.... Mikhail Gorbachev, Soviet Uniom. External candidate who shook things up radically... Lou Gerstner, IBM.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.