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,tosupportorganizationsintheshifttotheIndustry5.0framework. 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 tocopewiththegrowingchallengeofHRintegrationaccordingtotheIndustry5.0 paradigm.