Content area
Full text
A firm's specific knowledge and the ability and willingness to transfer it are considered key strategic assets in the course of generating competitive advantages. However, the characteristics of family firms implicate lower pressure to make knowledge explicit. Especially in the course of succession there is a high risk that knowledge embedded in the predecessor leaves the organization. In order to maintain the family firm's competitive advantage and to set the basis for innovating and improving efficiency, thus realizing the value of that knowledge, an understanding of the challenges associated with the knowledge transfer within intra-family succession is needed. By adopting a qualitative empirical approach, this paper aims at identifying context-based knowledge transfer strategies and at developing a typology of transfer constellations. The results provide insight for family firm leaders, who are searching for appropriate knowledge transfer strategies given the nature, philosophies and traditions of their small and medium sized firms.
Keywords: succession, family firm, knowledge transfer, qualitative study
INTRODUCTION
A firm's specific knowledge, as well as the ability and willingness to transfer it, is considered a key strategic asset in the course of generating competitive advantages (Spender/Grant 1996). Knowledge is viewed as the sum of expertise, skills and abilities applied by individuals in the form of theoretical knowledge and modes of dealing to solve problems (Leonard/Sensiper 1989). It can include facts and information, as well as understanding gained through experience, education or reason. In the course of succession there is a high risk that tacit knowledge embedded in the predecessor leaves the organization. Given 4.5 million business successions per year within the European Union (EU 2009), a successful knowledge transfer is of high economic relevance.
The typical characteristics of family firms, like their small size, informal organization structures and a restrictive information policy (see for example, Gallo 1995; Westhead/Cowling 1998) applied by the main entrepreneur, implicate lower pressure and a lower propensity to make knowledge explicit. In the course of a generation change, the family entrepreneur as the central information source leaves the firm, leading to questions as to whether the firm is going to irrecoverably lose the knowledge together with the predecessor, or whether it will be transferred to the successor or to another employee and, thus, placed in another personal storage,...