Effect of Succession Planning Strategies on the Sustainability of Family Businesses in Nigeria

Abstract The purpose of this research was to investigate the effect of succession planning strategies on the sustainability of family businesses in Nigeria, using mentoring, training, job rotation, coaching, talent management and internship as proxies of succession planning. The calculated sample size of 390 businesses was taken from a target population of 16,363 small businesses in the database of the Nigeria’s National Bureau of Statistics. To provide for anticipated “no response”, 443 questionnaires were administered, out of which 435 (98.2%) returned valid. The data collected was analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. Results of analyzed data from the study indicate that mentoring, training, job rotation, coaching, talent management and internship as succession planning strategies are positively correlated to sustainability of family businesses with statistical significance. This is corroborated by the F-test result with F statistic (202.5) larger than (2.01) critical F value and p-value (0.000) which is smaller than the (0.05) alpha level, implying that a significant joint impact of all the independent variables exists on the dependent variable (sustainability). Although the study is located in Nigeria, the results can be generalized to other countries as evidence from literature suggests that family owned businesses worldwide share similar characteristics irrespective of location.