Leadership Succession Practices And Employees’ Career Development In The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation

The inability of organizations to have a well-articulated Leadership Succession plan and culture has led to disruptions in operations and leadership transition crisis. Limited literature is available on the relationship between leadership succession planning and employees career development in NNPC raising debate whether the link is tenable with the corporation. In the NNPC, there is no deliberate and structured plan for leadership succession. So, this study examined the effect of leadership succession planning on employees’ career development in NNPC. The Social Cognitive Career Theory and Common-Sense Theory were used to support this research. The study adopted descriptive survey research design. The population of the research consisted of 9,024 top level, middle level and lower level management (Supervisors) staff of the NNPC who has spent more than 5years in the organization and have up to 5 years before retirement age of 60 years and sample size of 1,960 was derived using Slovin formula and purposive sampling procedure. Structured questionnaire with a six-point modified Likert- Scale was administered with a 74.6% response rate (926) copies of the questionnaires came correctly and were used for the study. The data obtained from the questionnaire was analyzed quantitatively using descriptive and inferential statistics. The results revealed that there is lack of leadership succession planning and practices in NNPC. The also revealed that there is no established career path for every employee and professional groups in NNPC. The study concludes that Leadership Succession practice have no significant effect on Employee Career Development in NNPC. The study recommends that Federal Government should empower the NNPC to put in place proper Leadership Succession planning especially in HR itself. This can be achieved when the corporation embeds a formal employee career development policy and procedure. Also, NNPC should continuously be strategizing and moving with the global trend in HR practices and to learn about future possibilities. The NNPC management and staff should align themselves with strategies to survive in the changing global business reality