This study aims to identify the challenges of succession for management officers and maritime commissioners who graduated from Imam Khomeini University of Maritime Sciences in 2022. In this qualitative study which is developmental-applied in terms of purpose, 20 commanders, and professors of the university in field of management and maritime commissioners as statistical population were included in the process of a semi-structured interview. The collected data were coded and analyzed by the grounded theory method and MAXQDA software. The results of the research were presented in form of a paradigmatic model based on theoretical theorems and concepts extracted from the succession literature. In this model, lack of serious attention to training, relative disregard to the principles of talent management, weak human resources planning (causal conditions); weakness in organizational knowledge management, weakness in individual characteristics of officers, insufficient attention to meritocracy (conditions of the central phenomenon); non-acceptance of the organization, negative results of succession, lack of career development approach and its evaluation (intervening conditions), lack of desire and motivation of management, desire to hold position among commanders and managers, lack of job mechanisms (prevailing conditions), belief of senior commanders, motivational incentives in the organization, perceived organizational support (strategies) were identified