The effect of strategic human capital renewal on organizational results: an empirical examination in the Italian Serie A professional football league

In this Chapter, we highlighted how shared tacit knowledge contributes to the development of higher-level resources and, in turn, to organizational performance. However, under specific circumstances, a given organization could, or should, release a portion of these higher-level resources. Several factors may affect the release of higher-level resources. First, firms can experience either internal or external causes that lead to the release of some co-specialized resources; second, employee turnover, both voluntary and involuntary, and employee movement, such us promotions, transfers, and demotions, are associated with a release of co-specialized knowledge resources; third, macroeconomic conditions and industry trends also represent factors that can instigate a change in the composition of strategic human capital and, in turn, in a team’s human capital configuration (Coff, 1997, 1999; Lepak & Gowan, 2010; Lepak & Snell, 1999). Finally, as reported in the previous chapter, we have empirically observed that shared experience positively affects team performance, albeit at a decreasing rate, an occurrence that could suggest the renewal of knowledge resources periodically to refresh a firm’s strategic human capital.