The Planned Decision to Transfer an Entrepreneurial Company.

The Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) is used in this paper to empirically study whether an entrepreneur transfers his/her firm, conditional on exiting the firm. TPB posits that entrepreneurial intentions drive actions, being the transfer of a business. The TPB framework is expanded by assessing whether formal and informal planning of the exit process further explains the remaining gap between intentions to transfer and the actual transfer. Based on survey responses of 198 Belgian entrepreneurs who exited their company between 2001 and 2006, the TPB explains both the intention to transfer and the actual transfer with a significant amount of variance. Formal planning of the exit has no direct impact on business transfers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]