Kunskapsöverföring inom franchisenätverk : En studie av utveckling och överföring av kunskap inom franchisenätverk

Sammanfattning: This case study has been conducted within the Swedish fitness chain World Class to explore the opportunities for knowledge development and transfers within franchise networks. We have interviewed the product manager at the World Class headquarter, the owner of a franchise club and a local product manager from the same facility. Our finding indicates that various forms of knowledge transfer occur within the World Class network, particularly in product development and sales. The transfer occurs within the framework set by World Class with regularly scheduled meetings. In addition informal networks provide other means of knowledge exchange between some units. For the owner we found a lesser degree of knowledge exchange despite that they share the same kind of formal framework. Our results points towards problems like the “not invented here”-syndrome, urge for independence and pride among the club owners. Besides that we found no resistance to share information from one unit to another. We found a lack of motivation for knowledge exchange, the benefits of knowledge transfer seemed unclear to the interviewed owner. Nevertheless, we found reasons to believe that entrepreneurship, innovation, creativity, the heterogeneity and the variety of market conditions within the franchise network gives high potential for knowledge exchange that may be unexploited.