Human resource strategic management in NPOs: An explorative study on managers' psychosocial training

Abstract

Purpose

This explorative research aims at examining the social representation of psychosocial training in NPOs managers.

Design/methodology/approach

An adopted multiple research approach was adopted to analyse a corpus of qualitative data. A detailed semi‐structured interview was administered to 122 senior managers of as many Italian NPOs. Interviews were analyzed using different techniques of content analysis and, run through the software T‐Lab (analysis of word occurrence and co‐word mapping, analysis of Markovian sequences).

Findings

Italian NPOs' organizational culture seem to be action‐oriented and self‐referral, rather than knowledge‐oriented. Training is not considered as a tool for strategic management of HR. Senior managers are mainly self‐taught, trained on‐the‐job and, lack of a proper competence on HR management.

Research limitations/implications

The group reached is a convenience sample and not a statistical representative sample.

Practical implications

The paper suggests that intellectual capital can be an effective tool to address Italian NPOs self‐referential knowledge and overcome their gaps in strategic management of human resources.

Originality/value

NPOs' senior manager training has rarely been addressed; in addition, the adopted methodology mixes different techniques of analysis.

Citation

Benevene, P. and Cortini, M. (2010), "Human resource strategic management in NPOs: An explorative study on managers' psychosocial training", Journal of Workplace Learning, Vol. 22 No. 8, pp. 508-521. https://doi.org/10.1108/13665621011082873