Succession planning as a strategic recipe for business continuity: Empirical evidence from Nigeria’s health sector

There is a preponderance of evidence to the effect of a disturbing trend of business discontinuity of private hospitals in Nigeria, thus raising a fundamental question as to the place and quality of succession planning in the system. Expectedly, the consequential impact of this negative development on the nation’s health sector is becoming a major source of concern for health authorities, analysts and researchers. This study appraises the relationship between succession planning and business continuity of private hospitals in Port Harcourt, Nigeria’s energy capital. Adopting a cross-sectional and quasi-experimental research design with directors, doctors, and nurses in private hospitals as the population of the study, two (2) copies of the research questionnaire were administered to each of the one hundred and eighteen (118) licensed and registered private hospitals in Port Harcourt. A total of two hundred and thirty-six (236) were returned and the data retrieved therefrom analyzed, using the Spearman Rank Order Correlation with the aid of Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS version 23.0). Results of the analyses demonstrate significant relationship between the proxies of Succession Planning (the predictor variable) and those of Business Continuity (the criterion variable). The study concludes that succession planning is a strong predictor of business continuity and implicates poor succession planning as a major cause of the observed business discontinuity in private hospitals in Port Harcourt. It recommends that private hospitals take seriously the need for optimizing their communication plan, implementing a formal succession plan, implementing flexible working policies, and instituting relevant training and mental health programmes at the workplace as part of their business continuity plan.