Professionalising Indian Family Firms: An Analysis of the Role of HR—Current Reality and Future Perspectives Tulsi Jayakumar 1 Abstract 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. Keywords Delegation of power, founder involvement, human control systems, professionals Introduction The transformation of family businesses from entrepreneurial start-ups which are owner managed to more formal, structured organisations is a major research issue in family business literature. Such transformation involves a process of professionalisation, with its attendant opportunities and challenges. A major constraint is the binary sense in which professionalisation is perceived as the presence/absence of professionally qualified people in business. However, a more appropriate way of looking at professionalisation is by considering it as a multi- dimensional construct (Dekker, Lybaert, Steijvers, & Depaire, 2015). Viewed thus, the role of HR in designing and implementing effective HR control systems becomes a vital aspect of such NHRD Network Journal 13(1) 25–37, 2020 © 2020 National HRD Network, Gurgaon Reprints and permissions: in.sagepub.com/journals-permissions-india DOI: 10.1177/2631454119894754 journals.sagepub.com/home/nhr Article 1 S. P. Jain Institute of Management and Research (SPJIMR), Mumbai, Maharashtra, India. Corresponding author: Tulsi Jayakumar, S. P. Jain Institute of Management and Research (SPJIMR), Dadabhai Road, Munshi Nagar, Andheri West, Mumbai 400058, Maharashtra, India. E-mails: tulsi.jayakumar@spjimr.org; tulsijayakumar@gmail.com