Succession Planning Practices and their Impact on Organisational Service Performance: Cross-National Evidence from Nigeria and Ghana

Abstract

Many public tertiary hospitals in sub-Saharan Africa face growing leadership gaps, frequent brain drain, and declining service quality. These challenges underscore the urgent need for structured succession planning to sustain organisational performance. Guided by the Resource-Based View (RBV), Human Capital Theory, and Institutional Theory, this study examined how Succession Planning Practices (SPP), through Talent Identification (TA), Mentoring (ME), Leadership Development (LD), and Career Pathing (CP), influence Organisational Service Performance (OSP) among public tertiary hospitals in Ghana and Nigeria. A cross-sectional survey design was adopted, and data were collected from 731 clinical/medical, support/ancillary/technical and management/administrative staff across all the regions of the two countries. The data were analysed using Covariance Based Structural Equation Modelling (CB-SEM) in AMOS. Findings showed that all four dimensions of SPP had positive and significant effects on service performance: TA (β = .24, p < .001), ME (β = .36, p < .001), LD (β = .29, p < .001), and CP (β = .21, p < .01). The overall SPP-OSP relationship was also positive and significant (β = .62, p < .001). The study concludes that effective succession planning enhances leadership continuity, staff development, and institutional performance. It recommends that public hospital administrators embed structured mentoring and leadership development programmes into HR policy and succession systems. Although limited by cross-sectional design and self-report data, future studies should adopt longitudinal or mixed methods approach to validate these results across other emerging economies in sub–Saharan Africa.