Relational Competence-Based Knowledge Transfer Within Intrafamily Succession: An Experimental Study

This paper discusses the challenges of knowledge management within intra-family succession against the background of the knowledge-based view. As a knowledge transfer is crucial for a successful business continuation, factors that promote the interpersonal knowledge transfer are identified. Since the quality of the relationship between successor and predecessor is considered a key determinant of knowledge transfer, the role of relational competence in the knowledge transfer process is analyzed. A laboratory experiment (N=107) was conducted in order to test the derived hypotheses. In its conclusion, the paper presents the empirically confirmed strong relationship between relational competence and knowledge transfer within intra-family succession.