Employee spinoffs as the channel of knowledge leakage in tourism industry

Although the problem of knowledge transfer becomes more intensively explored in tourism related studies, the management literature only to a limited extend addresses the issue of knowledge leakage. Given that knowledge loss is considered for the most part in the context of employee mobility, the concern of knowledge disclosure and leakage refers primarily to staff outflow to other tourism businesses. A review of extant literature indicated a lack of studies on the knowledge transfer to new tourism ventures set up by ex-employees, i.e. employee spinoffs. Therefore, the aim of the article is to fill the research gap by exploring the nature of the knowledge transferred to employee spinoffs created in tourism industry and the development of parent-spinoff business relationships