Status and Cultural Capital of Bollywood Dynasties

Abstract

The most common organizational form globally and historically, family businesses, are driven by the dynastic motive - to pass on the owners’ status and wealth to the next generation. However, our understanding of the descendants’ fate remains severely limited. Some evidence suggests that investors discount the family’s next generations as nepotism and unwillingness to professionalize. Further, family owners tend to be conservative and eschew uncertainty. On the other hand, family players have dominated creative and cultural industries for generations that have considerable uncertainty about the producers and the final product. We suggest that the dynastic players use status and cultural capital handed down through the generations to navigate markets. We show that the dynastic roots of producers and superstars in Bollywood (Hindi movie industry) play a pivotal role in offering atypical films and enhancing box-office performance. However, the legacy also induces anxiety, lest dynastic players may be denigrated in the social hierarchy. Dynastic producers are conservative when working with superstars who may steal their thunder of novelty, and superstars with dynastic roots are constrained by the audience expectations set by their ancestors. We discuss the implications of our study on family firm and social evaluations theories.