Content area
Full Text
Transformation of the Human Resource (HR) function from the traditional to a modern and professional one continues to be a challenge for most family-owned organizations. This paper discusses the traditional HR practices followed in an Indian religious family-owned organization, the actions taken during the transformation process of professionalizing the firm and the challenges faced by the newly recruited HR head while executing this process, along with the change management schema adopted for professionalization. During this process, deeply-rooted traditions prevalent in the firm had to be a balanced with a need for modernization. A steady approach with small steps at a time-rather than a radical transformation at a fast pace-was adopted for the change process. The intention of the professionalization process was not to harm or do away with the inherent good people-management practices that already existed but build upon them. At the same time, practices and styles had to be changed, and concerns of employees addressed. The paper also brings forth the impact of owner/promoter's religious beliefs on the organizational and also opens avenues for future research on the relatively unexplored domains of religion and management. We discuss a three-pronged plan comprising of overall strategy development, tuning the HR systems to meet transformation goals and building a new professional culture. The paper adds to the existing theory and practice by proposing the secularization matrix for managing transformation in such organizations.
Key Words: Religious family-owned organizations, Professionalization, Human resource transformation, Change management schema, Religious beliefs
INTRODUCTION
Religion has always had a profound impact on business at many levels, processes and stakeholders (Drakopoulou and Seaman, 1998). Behavioral economists recognize this link and study its impact on different functions like marketing and finance (Minton and Kahle, 2014). This link is evident in studies that showed how different dimensions of religion was connected with entrepreneurship (Hoogendoorn, Rietveld and Stel, 2016) and its impact on stakeholders like consumers (Parameswaran, 2014). Religion has also been studied as a tool to curb unethical practices like earnings management (Du, Jian, Lai, Du and Pei, 2015) and also to enhance the ethical climate of business (Peifer, 2015) because of its emphasis on greater good and pursuit of high values (Stebbins, 1997). Often religion decides the internal sanctioning systems of individuals, and thus help...