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While prior research suggests that human resource management (HRM) practices are crucial drivers of a firms' intellectual capital, few studies have tried to deconstruct this relationship and investigate how HRM practices specifically affect intellectual capital resources. Furthermore, prior research treated this relationship as universal and rarely tried to introduce important contingent factors that may alter the mechanisms involved in how HRM practices influence firms' intellectual capital. In this study, the authors examine the relationships between the ability-, motivation- and opportunity-enhancing dimensions of HRM systems and human, social and structural capital and investigate how companies' codification and personalization knowledge management (KM) strategies may alter these relationships.

The data were collected using a telephone survey of 215 knowledge-intensive companies operating in Russia. The paper utilizes partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS–SEM) to evaluate the measurement model and test hypothesized relationships.

The findings indicate positive relationships between ability-enhancing practices and firms' human capital between motivation-enhancing practices and firms' human and social capital and between opportunity-enhancing practices and firms' social and structural capital. The authors’ results reveal the limited moderating role of KM strategies in the relationships between HRM and intellectual capital. While a personalization strategy had no impact on any of the proposed relationships, a codification strategy positively moderated the relationship between opportunity-enhancing HRM practices and firms' structural capital.

The study expands the debates in strategic HRM literature by looking “inside” the HRM–intellectual capital relationship. Additionally, the authors’ findings reveal the complexity of the contingent effect that KM strategies of codification and personalization have on the relationship between HRM practices and intellectual capital. Although some of the relationships were not moderated by the KM strategy of the firm, the HRM–intellectual capital relationship cannot be considered fully universal.

Human resource management in professional service firms (PSF) is one of the most important instruments for promoting sustainable competitive advantage. Despite the major growth of scholars' interest in human resource management (HRM) issues in PSF, the body of knowledge in this field remains highly fragmented and diversified. The purpose of this paper is to systematize key evidence on the use of HRM practices in PSF.

The paper is based on a systematic literature review of 90 peer-reviewed journal papers.

The review revealed typical ability-, motivation- and opportunity-enhancing practices used by PSF and outlined how these HRM practices may differ among various PSF.

The paper provides scholars with an updated and comprehensive research landscape and development process in this important field, thereby contributing to greater research interest and enthusiasm for future research.

Agile project management methods gain increasing attention of practitioners while they often remain neglected by scholarly research. Specifically, there is little known about how performance factors of agile firms differ from those of traditional firms. Scholars argue that these factors often relate to a firm’s human resource management (HRM). This study aims to analyze and compare the HRM architectures in agile and traditional project-based organizations that lead to high firm performance.

The authors apply fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis on data of 154 project-based organizations of diverse professional service industries in Russia.

This study’s findings suggest that HRM architectures of high-performance agile firms imply a broad use of ability-, motivation- and opportunity-enhancing practices and a high degree of HRM process centralization, while traditional firms adopt more diverse HRM architectures.

Based on this study’s results, the authors stress the importance of ensuring a good fit between a company’s project management approach and HRM architecture. The revealed configurations may also provide guidance for practitioners on designing effective HRM architectures in project-based organizations.

The employer brand could be a key factor of competitiveness for a company in a contemporary labour market. The purpose of this paper is to identify the features of human resource development (HRD) practices and talent management in companies with employer brand (CEBs).

The authors examined three economic indicators (turnover rate, average share of HR costs in total costs of company, proportion between the annual HR training budget and annual labour compensation funds). An employee survey was conducted to study the HRD system in the CEBs and in companies without the employer brand (CWEBs). Also, the survey was conducted among applicants (potential workers) about their job preferences and identified that employer brand could be a strong factor for attracting talent to the company.

The results show considerable differences in terms of economic indicators, HRD practices and talent management in the CEBs in comparison with CWEBs. The potential advantages of employer brand for a company were identified. The results of the study strongly supported that the CEBs gained a number of economic advantages due to lower rates of staff turnover and higher rates of HR investments in training and development activities of employees. Also, the authors found out that in the CEBs internal recruitment practices, internal training programs and highly efficient incentive activities were widespread and employees were actively involved in the decision‐making and management processes.

This paper is the first large‐scale study in Russia that examines the relationship between the HRD system and employer brand and enables companies to modify their HRD policies and practices in order to become attractive employers in an era of the so‐called “war for talents”.

The paper investigates personal and environmental factors providing for the efficiency of line managers' activity and contributing to their professional and career advancement. The paper studies the prognostic value of the assessment of personal and environmental factors providing for the efficiency of line managers' activity according to Blumberg and Pringle's methodology in order to select their lines of training and development.

The methodological approach is based on Blumberg and Pringle's organizational‐psychological model. A conceptual framework was developed from psychological test data and expert interviews with 307 line managers (of two large enterprises), 65 top managers and 100 entrepreneurs (heads of SMEs) from the Northwest of Russia.

The research allowed the isolation of those personal qualities of line managers that separate them from top managers. Sets of personal and environmental factors providing for line managers' labor efficiency and contributing to their professional and career advancement were determined.

Employees at Russian state industrial enterprises were the subject of this research. The specifics of respondent sampling restrict the possibility of extrapolating the findings and generalizations made in this paper onto middle and lower managers from organizations with other ownership patterns, areas of activity and ethnic cultures.

The research findings can be used by HRD specialists in industrial enterprises for the creation of development programs for line managers. Am assessment of personal and environmental factors based on Blumberg and Pringle's model can be used as a criterion for selecting areas of development for line managers, as it is aligned towards the realization of personal and professional potential. Based on the assessment results, variants of training can be offered to employees in the professional sphere, or in the sphere of management or personal development.

For the first time, in this work the differences in personality traits of line managers and top managers of Russian industrial enterprises have been determined, sets of personal and professional factors characterizing line managers' attitudes to development prospects have been described (these sets have been conventionally named “specialists” and “careerists”), and the possibility of using Blumberg and Pringle's model to predict line managers' potential areas of training and development has been demonstrated.

The goal of this article is to conduct macro‐level analysis of human capital (HC) development strategies, pursued by four countries commonly referred to as BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, and China).

This analysis is based on comparisons of macro indices of human capital and innovativeness of the economy and a review of related academic literature and government publications.

The study results suggest that in terms of present human capital capacity Russia and Brazil are ahead of China and India. However, during the last decade the governments of the latter two countries have initiated impressive national programs of HC development, which include significant investment and targeted government regulation in such areas as primary and secondary education, vocational education and training, and higher education, especially in science and technology fields. Russia and Brazil have targeted programs in some of the above areas, but lack comprehensive long‐term strategies, covering all the above areas and coordinating effort of various agencies and constituencies.

It is recommended to expand the scope of analysis to include other fast growing developing economies (e.g. Mexico, Indonesia, and Turkey).

The article provides, for the first time, a comparison of human capital development indices and strategies of the four largest developing economies. The original feature of the article is a combination of the analysis of macro‐level indices with an in‐depth analysis of policy documents and academic literature.

There is a long-going discussion in Russia focusing on finding new stimulus for economic growth. Being very rich with natural recourses, Russia has enjoyed extensive economic growth model for many centuries. The world is changing. Russia as any country which is to keep up with the dynamics and the quality of the world economic growth must find some new technologies and economic triggers. Green investment can be regarded as the key instrument to achieve faster economic growth and to make technological gap narrower. The chapter focuses on state policy and business practice in green investment in Russia.

The authors wanted to study the theme as there hasn’t been much research into the different factors for high performance in agile versus traditional companies.

The authors conducted a quantitative study of Russian professional services firms using structured phone interviews. They compared project-based companies using agile methods with rival firms that used more traditional methods. The questionnaire included questions on the role of HRM, the level of business strategy formalization, the use of strategies to enhance motivation and opportunities. There were also questions about agile frameworks and project management practices. The sample contained 154 companies, 61 of which used agile technologies.

They found that agile firms tend to rely more on HMR policies than traditional companies, especially on strategies to enhance motivation and opportunity. Agile companies also have more centralized HRM architectures with less delegation of different levels of management. Meanwhile, the results show that the HRM architectures for successful traditional firms are more diverse. HRM practices in these companies have different levels of importance and various degrees of decentralization and digitalization.

The authors say their study fills a gap because there hasn’t been much research into the different factors for high performance in agile versus traditional companies. The study, they say, has important theoretical and practical implications, and also provides evidence of the importance of HRM practices for organizational success.

The aim of this paper is to review published conceptual and research papers within the field of international, comparative and cross‐cultural HRD.

The paper's approach is a targeted literature review focusing on papers within the mainstream HRD journals, as well as a small number of non HRD journals.

The literature review revealed that international, comparative and cross‐cultural HRD is an emerging subfield of study. In general the authors were able to categorise the literatures into the three trajectories specified. However, they noted contradictions and confusions within the literature.

The paper is solely theoretical in nature; however, it does identify gaps for further research. The authors highlight specific research questions within each trajectory as well as proposing a global HRD construct.

The paper is particularly valuable to scholars interested in theorising and researching international, comparative and cross‐cultural HRD. It sets the scene for the special issue on the three trajectories, and identifies possible avenues for future theorising and research.