Leadership succession, organizational climate, trust and individual performance in Nigerian commercial banks

The objective of this study was to examine the relationship between leadership succession, organizational climate and individual performance in the Nigerian commercial banks. Primarily, this study explored the moderating effect of trust on the relationship between leadership succession, dimensions of organizational climate (i.e. quality, integration, and well-being) and individual performance that comprises of adaptive, task, and contextual performance. Stratified random sampling was used in which samples were drawn from six geographical zones of Nigeria (i.e. Lagos, Delta, Abia, Abuja, Kano, and Bauchi). Data was collected through the self-administrated method by sending questionnaires to 600 commercial bank branch managers within the six geographical zones selected. A total of 84 items were used in the questionnaire to examine all the variables illustrated in the theoretical framework. All the instruments were adapted from past literature. The statistical package for social science (SPSS) version 20.0 was used to test the hypotheses. The results provided support for some of the hypothesized relationships for the study. Specifically, leadership succession was positively related to adaptive performance but negatively related to task performance.
Additionally, integration was also positively related to both task and contextual performance, while well-being was positively related to only task performance. Furthermore, the results of the moderating effect of trust indicated that four out of the twelve hypotheses were moderated. Therefore, the significant positive influence of leadership succession, quality, integration and well-being suggest that the variables are important in motivating individual performance. As such, employees should be encouraged to exhibit these behaviours to enhance the performance of the organization. Finally, the contribution, limitations, and implications of the study are discussed.