In this paper, we analyse the impact of the Covid‐19 crisis in organizations from the point of view of knowledge management. Specifically, we address the question of technology, people and processes. We conclude, first, that KM should be put at the centre stage in 2021 because, above all, first and foremost, the Covid‐19 crisis is a crisis about knowledge, and that a massive knowledge failure has been at its core – namely, the absence of a vaccine and the cure for Covid‐19. We furthermore conclude that in organizations, there was a complete lack of “social knowledge” linked with “organizational behaviour” which led to an organizational crisis; quite crucially, we believe that the mentioned crisis was even fostered by the immense technology available, but continued because, despite all the value of people, there was not knowledge about processes; in fact, suddenly, the drastic change in setting caused previously competent people to become incompetent. All this leads to the third conclusion, namely, the solution of the crisis will be achieved using technology and making people competent again and teaching them the right processes. Finally, for the time being, Humanity is still searching for answers, and we believe that all the partial measures (such as use of masks, social distance, washing hands, home/remote working, etc.) will mean an advance and increase in organizational agility.

PurposeIn July 2009 the Universidade Lusíada de Famalicão organized the International Conference on Managing Services in the Knowledge Economy 2009 (MSKE 2009). http://clegi.fam.ulusiada.pt/MSKE2009/. MSKE 2009 was an interesting forum which gathered 60 specialists from 20 countries in different areas such as knowledge management, intellectual capital, human resource development, social policy, law and international economics. In the human resource development field, five relevant contributions were selected to compose the current issue. The purpose of this introductory paper is to review the literature on the role of human resource development (HRD) in the current knowledge based and services driven economy.Design/methodology/approachThe paper reviews the importance of knowledge as a crucial economic factor and the importance of services as the main area of economic business. It shows how HRD relates to services and knowledge.FindingsStarting at the time of the Agricultural Revolution when human resources (HR) were marginally considered, the paper ends in the globalized and technologic advanced world of 2010 in which HR are a decisive production factor and are analyzed by different very important scientific perspectives. Crucially, in the present new order of the world, services are the main economic sector in advanced countries. The important role of HRD as a factor of success in a world dominated by services and knowledge is explained. The major open questions and controversies related to HRD are enumerated.Research limitations/implicationsQuite a number of open questions remain in the HRD field. Those questions relate to individuals, educational system, organizations, and to society as a whole. Those questions are analyzed in detail in this introduction. The current special issue includes papers dealing with five separate topics related to the open questions: academic curricula needed for the service sector; role of universities and workplace work‐related arrangements of the educational system; intellectual capital management; career advancement; career aspirations.Originality/valueThe paper introduces the special issue of the Journal of European Industrial Training on “HRD in the knowledge based and services driven economy”.

The current pandemic is, above all, a crisis of knowledge—Humanity had to find a vaccine, and now we are not sure how to behave socially to minimize the pandemic bad effects. For organizations, this situation requires an update in the reflection regarding both the strategy and the actions that should be performed. Therefore, the current crisis requires new ways of applying knowledge strategies and dealing with dynamic capabilities. We first analyze the two questions (knowledge strategies and dynamic capabilities) in abstract and general terms, and then we specifically focus on business education during the COVID-19 crisis. We conclude that COVID-19 creates a need for all knowledge strategies in terms of business education. Data, information, knowledge, and wisdom will be needed; above all, it requires the Unknown-Knowns, which is the basis for Knowledge Sharing, and the Unknown-Unknowns that base Knowledge Exploration because both Knowledge Exploitation and Knowledge Acquisition are strategies business schools use to perform in times of crisis. They are more difficult to implement because both the Known-Knowns and the Known-Unknowns are less valuable to solve a crisis like this one: all this will result in “agile universities”, which will be (and already are) those that will use the right strategies and the right dynamic capabilities and will have better results. The paper is original because we link Knowledge Management and Human Resources Development Concepts to generate a broader and more comprehensive understanding of the organizational behavior about a very specific problem—business education—in a very specific time of the COVID-19 crisis. The limits of the paper relate to the evolution of society itself; we do not know when the crisis will end, and we are not sure how much of the “new normal” will remain in the “post-COVID-19” situation. The topic and analysis are of interest for practitioners because daily, they experience how their reality changed and their need to adapt, yet they do not know how. This topic and analysis are also of interest to scholars because science is based on questions, explaining and providing ways to improve one’s reality. COVID-19 has shown us, dramatically and uniquely, the need for new solutions in times of peace.

Purpose – This paper aims to explore whether individual intellectual capital of a fund manager allows mutual fund to outperform market. Design/methodology/approach – The sample includes 85 Russian equity funds for the period of 2013. First, Jensen’s alpha for each fund has been calculated, and then cross-sectional regression analysis has been used. While only a part of fund managers publish biographic sketches, the authors use the Heckman procedure to control for self-selection issues. Findings – The results support the idea that the individual characteristics indicate the possibility to earn abnormal alpha. Managers with economic education and with Moscow education perform better than others. Relationship between both fund performance measures and manager’s experience has inverted U-shape. Jensen’s alpha reaches its highest level at the point of 9 years, whereas beta – at 10 years of manager’s experience. Research limitations/implications – Investigation can be improved by including more variables that influence the disclosure of managers’ personal information, for example, by conducting surveys. Additionally, cross-sectional data restrict the analysis. Practical implications – The discovered characteristics of managers’ intellectual capital can be used as additional screening tool for the investor who is deciding on mutual fund choice in Russia. While individual intellectual capital is observable and more persistent in time in comparison with the past fund performance, such tool allows better decision-making. Originality/value – This is the first paper that explores which characteristics of Russian fund managers are connected with higher abnormal return (measured by Jensen’s alpha) and risk (beta) of mutual funds.