Family Business and Entrepreneurship

Professor Astha Mishra is an interdisciplinary scholar working at the intersection of sociology and management. Her research examines how social institutions such as kinship, caste, and community shape organisational forms, knowledge systems, and economic life. She studies family enterprises and enterprising families, organisational design, indigenous knowledge systems, and occupational mobility, with a particular interest in developing organisation theory from the Global South.

Through qualitative and ethnographic research, she investigates how social structures and social relations influence organisational continuity, governance, learning, and intergenerational knowledge transmission. Her work seeks to advance alternative organisational perspectives that move beyond dominant firm-centric and Western theoretical frameworks.

Professor Mishra served as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad. She completed her PhD in Sociology from the University of Hyderabad, where her research examined honour, community, and gender relations among Jat and Muslim women in western Uttar Pradesh. Her current research spans family enterprises, caste and entrepreneurship, tacit knowledge, organisational learning, and indigenous systems of organising.

She has published in leading journals, including Sociological Bulletin, and has ongoing work under review in management and gender studies journals. She has presented her research at international conferences, including the Academy of Management, Family Enterprise Research Conference, India Strategy Conference, and Caste, Business and Society Annual Conference.