The Role of Awareness in Designing Human Resources Management Practices in Family Firms

The chapter aims to develop a theoretical configurational model of HRM practices for family firms based on the construct of awareness. The typology of ideal HRM practices configurations the authors developed grounds on are 1) two organizational factors (awareness of the internal and external environment and organizational awareness) and 2) two dimensions of organizational awareness (the need for explicit and implicit coordination mechanisms). The first dimension refers to the need for mechanisms explicitly adopted by a family firm to manage task or communication interdependencies. The second one relates to those requirements for mechanisms that are available to family firms from shared cognition, which enable them to explain and anticipate task statuses and individuals' collaborative behaviors, thus helping them in managing task interdependencies. The authors combined these results in four configurations of HRM practices (administrative, shared, professional, and integrated configurations) and developed seven propositions.