Organisational Resilience, HR Practices, and Firm Survival During Economic Crises in Nigeria: A Multi-Wave Longitudinal Study

This doctoral study investigates the relationship between organisational resilience capabilities, strategic HR practices, and firm survival outcomes during economic crises in Nigeria, conducting a multi-wave longitudinal analysis across the 2015 to 2016 recession, the COVID-19 economic shock, and the 2022 to 2023 currency and inflation crisis. Nigeria's businesses face recurring economic shocks of unusual severity, making organisational resilience building a strategic priority, yet the specific HR practice configurations that distinguish surviving from failing firms during crises remain empirically under-specified in the Nigerian context. A multi-wave longitudinal design was employed, tracking 185 firms across manufacturing, services, and agriculture in Lagos, Kano, and Rivers States through three crisis periods, combining annual survey data with financial performance records and qualitative interviews with HR directors and CEOs at each wave. Latent growth curve modelling, survival analysis with time-varying covariates, and qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) were applied in an integrated analytical strategy. The Organisational Resilience Framework by Lengnick-Hall and the Dynamic Capabilities View underpin the theoretical architecture. The study generates four original theoretical contributions: a longitudinal HR Resilience Practice Profile characterising firms that survive multiple crises; an empirically derived model of HR practice reconfiguration during crisis phases; a contextualised Organisational Resilience Model for emerging market firms incorporating institutional uncertainty as an endogenous variable; and the first application of QCA to HR-survival relationships across multiple Nigerian crisis episodes. Recommendations include crisis HR planning requirements in corporate governance codes, government-backed resilience training for SME HR managers, and crisis-contingent labour law provisions. Keywords: organisational resilience, HR practices, economic crises, firm survival, longitudinal Nigeria