Purpose: This explorative research aims at examining the social representation of psychosocial training in NPOs managers. Design/methodology/approach: An adopted multiple research approach was adopted to analyse a corpus of qualitative data. A detailed semi-structured interview was administered to 122 senior managers of as many Italian NPOs. Interviews were analyzed using different techniques of content analysis and, run through the software T-Lab (analysis of word occurrence and co-word mapping, analysis of Markovian sequences). Findings: Italian NPOs' organizational culture seem to be action-oriented and self-referral, rather than knowledge-oriented. Training is not considered as a tool for strategic management of HR. Senior managers are mainly self-taught, trained on-the-job and, lack of a proper competence on HR management. Research limitations/implications: The group reached is a convenience sample and not a statistical representative sample. Practical implications: The paper suggests that intellectual capital can be an effective tool to address Italian NPOs self-referential knowledge and overcome their gaps in strategic management of human resources. Originality/value: NPOs' senior manager training has rarely been addressed; in addition, the adopted methodology mixes different techniques of analysis. (Contains 2 tables and 2 figures.)