A forty years' Literature Review on HRM in Family Businesses: Re-shaping the Research Agenda

his paper describes the evolution of the research for HRM in family firms through a unique lens: a 40-year content analysis and review of published articles in the field of HRM in family businesses. The paper copes with three major questions: (a) What have been the contributions of HRM to family businesses' research? (b) What can be learned from the way the research of HRM in family firms' has been implemented in organization studies? and (c) How has this literature evolved through time? We conducted a systematic literature review from 1976-2016. We described the emphasis on HRM topical areas, as well as changes in them. We identified key themes, and showed how the results correspond or do not correspond to develop a consistent band coherent bulk of theory and managerial implications. Then, we adopted a content analysis approach for exploring the debate. We used Iramuteq software. Exploring the specificities of the language of the existing literature, we revealed that the scientific debate on HRM in family firms has still not completely defined boundaries. While exploring the aggregated contributions of the extant literature, we discovered that three main groups of papers cover the whole 352 papers database: a cluster for the Ownership domain, related with HRM systems for selecting, aligning behaviours of top executives or directors, a cluster for the Family domain, related with the HRM of family issues, and, last but not least, a cluster for the Business domain, exploiting the task environment of the family firm. This literature review intended to confirm the crucial role of HRM in family firms. HRM and family businesses' performances are a duo that could receive more attention by scholars. In fact it is ascertained that high performing firms acknowledge the role of HRM and they encourage the adoption and the implementation within family firms.