Purpose – This explorative research aims at examining the relationship between human capital and structural capital in Italian NPOs, focusing on senior managers. Design/methodology/approach – Administration of a semi-structured interview to 122 senior managers of the same number of Italian NPOs. Interviews have been analyzed using different techniques: content analysis, run through the software T-Lab (analysis of word occurrence and co-word mapping, analysis of Markovian sequences), as well as discourse analysis carried out by two independent judges. Findings – Italian NPOs' organizational culture is action-oriented and self-referral, not knowledge-oriented. Training is not considered as a tool for strategic management of HR. Senior managers are mainly self-taught and lack adequate competence on HR management. Organizational culture does not help the development of human capital as it neither uses structured procedures to select the best candidates, nor develops a training programme based on the organizational specific needs. Research limitations/implications – The group approached is a convenience sample, 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 triangulates different qualitative techniques of analysis.

In the contemporary educational landscape, there is a growing recognition of the transformative impact of practical experiences within traditional learning frameworks. This shift reflects a pedagogical evolution that values contextualized learning and the acquisition of practical skills together with theoretical knowledge. In the Italian educational context, School–Work Alternation (SWA) represents a proactive response to the evolving needs of the workforce and the imperative for educational institutions to prepare students for professional life. This study’s objectives include a deep exploration of students’ SWA experience, evaluating its impact on employability perceptions and the sense of agency, examining the influence of Self-Orientation, and contributing insights to the discourse on integrating practical experiences in education. Employing a mixed methodology and a bottom-up approach, 63 high school students of different Italian regions participated in an online in-depth interview and an ad hoc questionnaire designed to measure the experience of SWA in relation to variables of interest, utility, advantage, perception of support, quality of received mentoring, engagement, and satisfaction. The quantitative results indicate that personal choice significantly influences the perceived usefulness of and satisfaction with SWA, with those students guided by curiosity exhibiting higher utility and satisfaction. Qualitative analysis underscores both positive and negative aspects, with respondents viewing SWA as a useful experience bridging work, corporate, and school realms provided that students are key players in the SWA experience’s choice and that the SWA’s partners are motivated to guide them in this practical training. Moreover, results highlight SWA’s relevance in guiding academic and career paths, emphasizing its potential to offer valuable support to students. This study contributes nuanced insights into integrating practical experiences in education, offering recommendations for educators and policymakers to better prepare students for the dynamic demands of the modern job market.

Gratitude may be defined as a personal positive tendency to recognize and respond with gratitude to positive experiences. It has been extensively described within personal relationship literature, showing its correlations with life satisfaction and decreased psychopathology. We propose here to consider gratitude as both a personal and an organizational value able to improve job performance and job satisfaction. The specific aim is twofold: to explore how public administration workers are used to express and perceive gratitude in the workplace, and to validate a serial mediation model, in which dispositional, collective, and relational gratitude are predictors of job satisfaction and job performance. We have designed a mix-method study, with a survey and a diary study, choosing to collect data also on a daily basis because we were interested in gratitude exchanges in work contexts using the event-sampling data method. Nine employees from several Italian public administrations completed a gratitude diary for ten working days in the initial qualitative part of the study. Afterwards, a sample of 96 Italian public administration employees filled in a questionnaire with measures related to job satisfaction, job performance, and three dimensions of gratitude: dispositional, collective, and relational. Results confirm that the three types of gratitude are predictors of job performance and job satisfaction and this relation has been tested in a serial mediation model. This investigation on gratitude has practical implications for the planning of training interventions framed in the positive psychology context.

Objective: Demographic changes involving western countries and later retirements due to the recent pension reforms induce a gradual aging of the workforce. This imply an increasing number of workers with health problems and a decreasing of ability to work. In this direction, the present study aims at examining the role of job and personal resources between age and work ability within nurses. Method: The study was cross-sectional and not randomized; data were collected by a self-report questionnaire during a multi-center survey conducted in two Italian hospitals in 2016. In this way, 333 nurses were reached. Results: Multiple linear regression showed that age is significantly and negatively associated to work ability, and that job resources (e.g., decision authority and meaning of work) and personal resources (e.g., hope and resilience) moderate the relationship between age and work ability. Discussion: These results highlight that investing in work and personal resources to support WA is even more relevant for those professions where high physical effort is required.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to understand the representation that senior managers of Italian social enterprises have about their organization’s intellectual capital (IC), precisely about the human capital, relational capital and organizational capital. Design/methodology/approach: This paper used a qualitative approach. A total of 81 senior managers were interviewed individually. Interview data were analyzed using different techniques of content analysis, particularly by using the T-Lab software (analysis of word occurrence and co-word mapping, analysis of Markovian sequences). Findings: Findings confirm the divide between theory and practice of IC. The representation of the IC dimensions is rather different from the definition that is found in the academic literature. Limited awareness about IC components and their generative power of knowledge determines a limited exploitation of the social enterprises’ organizational knowledge. Research limitations/implications: The group reached is limited to Italy and is not statistically representative of all Italian social enterprises. Practical implications: Social enterprises are crucial in the development and well-being of societies. However, the findings suggest that many social enterprises managers are not fully aware of the importance of IC and how it may create value for their organizations. This paper stresses that senior managers of social enterprises need to, through various methods, have a better understanding of IC management and knowledge creation if they are to fully utilise the potential of IC in their organizations for survival and growth. Originality/value: This is the first attempt to explore the perception of IC’s components among social enterprises, which represent an important development of non-profit organizations.

Background: A wealth of cross-sectional studies show consistent positive relationships between teachers’ happiness and self-esteem on one hand, and health, on the other, which calls for additional research in order to disentangle cause and effect between the two, and to find potential mediators. Aims: To investigate the mediating role played by job satisfaction between teachers’ happiness and self-esteem and their physical and mental health. Methods: A questionnaire was administered, containing questions about participants’ background information and the following scales: the Job Satisfaction Survey, the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, the Physical and Mental Health Scales (SF12), and the Ivens Scale in the Adapted Version for Teachers: School Children’s Happiness Inventory (SCHI). The participants were 300 primary and middle school teachers from the Indian State of Kerala. Results: Job satisfaction fully mediates between both happiness and self-esteem, and health in teachers. Conclusion: Work is a relevant domain to promote teachers’ happiness and self-esteem, and their health, through job satisfaction.