Management Succession Planning and Family Business Continuity in Lagos State, Nigeria

The desire to achieve business continuity is a goal many family business owners seek to achieve. Family businesses have made greater contributions to economic growth and development of Nigeria. However, family
businesses in Nigeria have being experiencing hard times evidence by persistent decline in the family business
survival, performance, growth, and sales growth. Family business owners are facing many obstacles that limit
their long-term continuity and development attributed to the lack of succession planning strategy such as management style, organisational structure, management transition process and organisational culture. This
study investigated the effect of management succession planning on family business continuity in Lagos State,
Nigeria. Survey research design was adopted for the study. The population of this study consisted of 8712 registered family businesses in Lagos State. A sample size of 477 was determined using Cochran formula sample size determination simple random sampling technique was employed. A validated, adapted and self developed questionnaire was administered to respondents. The Cronbach’s Alpha coefficients ranged between 0.741 and 0.952. Data was analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics. Findings of the study revealed that management style had no significant effect on business survival of family business in Lagos State, Nigeria.  Organisation structure had significant effect on business growth. Organisation culture had significant effect on business performance. Managerial transition process had significant effect on sales
growth. The study concluded that management succession planning affect family business continuity in Lagos State, Nigeria. The study therefore recommended that family business owners and managements pay more attention to improving supervisors’ management and leadership skills and to monitoring the relationship between managers and employees. Also, organisational structure elements such as organizational size, structure formalization, structure complexity and structure centralization should be considered to be very important when family owned businesses are developing their organizational structure.