Professionalising Indian Family Firms: An Analysis of the Role of HR—Current Reality and Future Perspectives

A critical challenge in the long-term survival and growth of family businesses is the adoption of professionalisation. The latter itself, when viewed as a multi-dimensional construct, would involve a critical role assigned to HR and HR control systems. This article then seeks to undertake an exploratory research to understand the current reality and the future perspectives of professionalisation in Indian family businesses through the lens of HR and HR control systems. Six caselets explore the experiences of six representative family businesses with regard to their professionalisation journey. The article finds that while the next-generation views professionalisation as imperative for scaling up, HR is still in its infancy stage in these Indian family firms. This would have ramifications for the outcomes of such professionalisation. The article concludes that HR would need to be assigned the role of a regenerative function, rather than a back-end administrative role that seems to be the current reality.