Rethinking companies’ culture through knowledge management lens during Industry 5.0 transition

Purpose Through the human resources (HR) and knowledge management (KM) perspective as human-centric processes, the aim of this study is to explore how companies’ engagement in diversity (DIV), inclusion (INC) and people empowerment (PEMP) policies influences companies’ organizational performance, to support organizations in the shift to the Industry 5.0 framework. Design/methodology/approach Combining the HR management and the KM-driven organizational culture, a conceptual model is proposed for explaining companies’ higher organizational performance. Proposed hypotheses are tested with reference to a set of listed international companies traced by Refinitiv on a five-year time horizon (2016–2020) through 24,196 firm-year observations. Findings This research shows that companies engaged in DIV policies, INC practices and PEMP through education have higher profitability and are more valued by capital markets’ investors. Originality/value This paper draws attention to the need to overcome the reductionist view of HR and rethink KM architecture to cope with the growing challenge of HR integration according to the Industry 5.0 paradigm.