Exploring The Evolution Of Family Business Owners After Exit: The Role of Ownership Competences

This study critically investigates how family business owners reconfigure their competencies after selling their legacy firms, challenging prevailing assumptions that exit irreversibly deplete socioemotional wealth. Drawing on an inductive multiple-case study of twenty Italian families, it reveals three distinct post-exit profiles—independent, societal, and financial—that illuminate varying degrees of identity rupture, emotional ties, and strategic redeployment. By integrating family business governance and entrepreneurial exit literatures, the study underscores how owners selectively adapt their firm-specific expertise and networks to pursue personal, social, or financial objectives. Contrary to linear exit narratives, the findings show that competences can be transformed, rather than lost, through both hands-on and hands-off learning processes. This study thus contributes to competence theory and highlights the critical importance of identity work in shaping post-exit trajectories. Practically, these insights guide family owners and advisors in anticipating competence gaps and leveraging post-exit opportunities for sustained entrepreneurial and legacy-building outcomes.