Ecological Planning and Sustainability of Persons Owned Businesses in Delta State, Nigeria

A large number of Personal owned Businesses (POB's) in Delta State that have either closed shop or stopped functioning properly at the demise of the owner/manager as a result of what appears to be lack of proper succession planning necessitated this study. The broad objective of the study was to examine the place of succession planning in the sustainability of selected Family-Owned Businesses (POB's) in Delta State. Survey research design was adopted for the study. The population of the study consisted of 275 POB’s comprising of 50 incorporated POB’s and 225 unincorporated POB. The complete enumeration was adopted. Data was collected through the use of the questionnaire and analysed using Pearson's Product Moment Correlation Co-efficient to test for relationship and t-test to examine the mean difference. Findings revealed that mentorship has a high positive significant relationship with sustainability (r = .858 p < .05) and that there is no statistical difference between the perceptions of selected incorporated POB’s and unincorporated POB’s on succession planning in Delta State (t = -218 p > .05). The study concluded that mentorship is very germane in the quest to perpetuate the existence of family businesses and therefore recommended that POB's should see mentorship as a process that is gradual and not rushed towards the end; the owner/managers of POB's should ensure that they first of all ensure that they make the people who will take over to be genuinely interested in the business and that owner/founders should see succession as a process of sustaining their businesses for long rather than a process of relinquishing power and control.