Knowledge Transfer Process in Family Businesses: a grounded theory approach

Abstract: Family businesses play an important role in the economic development and survival of the society. Many large companies have been founded and managed by families around the world. One of the most important processes in a family business is substitution and knowledge transfer, which guarantees the survival of family businesses and transfers knowledge from a generation to next generations. This research is fundamental by its purpose and qualitative by its data gathering method. The purpose of this study is to identify the knowledge transfer process in family businesses, using the grounded theory approach and analyzing the data from 24 interviews. After 21 interviews, we reached Theoretical saturation but we continue until 24 cases. According to our findings, maintaining credibility, the existence of knowledge sources and the desire to survive are the causal conditions affecting the process of knowledge transfer in family businesses. Family values and culture are the context conditions, common aspirations, confidence in the source of knowledge and strong relationship as innerving conditions, Motivation and commitment as strategies and survival of the business and maintaining competitive advantage as consequences.