The traditional Italian Universities' reaction to the pandemic emergency. The role of the intellectual capital

Purpose – The lockdown imposed to avoid the increase in the number of infections caused by the pandemicemergency declared in January 2020 has unavoidably compromised the normal functioning of the Universities.Theyhavebeenforcedtostoptheoperationof their traditionalstudent-orientedactivities.Inthislight,thepresentworkaimsto analyse how traditional Italian Universities continue to deliver services to their students during the emergency.Design/methodology/approach – Qualitative explorative research was done. The paper used a multiplecase study focused on two main public universities located in Rome (Italy). The data was collected using actionresearch with participant observation. The activities observed before and during the health emergency arethose related to the second mission and their services.Findings – Until the pandemic emergency arose, in the organizations analysed, the work was donetraditionally. When the lockdown started the main instruments adopted to teach and provide the relatedservices to students were the digital tools. Therefore, these devices represent how these organizations couldimmediately react to face the challenge arising from the impossibility to physically meet the students whilecontinuing to support them in their educational path. Based on the findings obtained these universities fall intothe “corporate entrepreneurship” definition.Research limitations/implications – The present work has managerial and academic implications. Theacademic implications can be summarized in two main points: the work (1) promptly analysed the changesnecessary to overcome the problematics caused by the pandemic emergency; (2) contributes to the debateconcerning the transfer of knowledge using digital tools and their relevance on the intellectual capital. One ofthe limits of the work is that only two Italian traditional universities are analysed and that the study focuses onuniversities located in a same city.Practical implications – On the other hand, in referent to managerial implications, this paper highlights howthe corporate entrepreneurial view could be useful to support an inspected challenge that could happened in acertain historical period. Therefore, a real implementation of the entrepreneurial concepts is preferred.Originality/value – The paper discussed an original and contemporary topic not yet investigated since itrefers to the Universities’ reaction to the pandemic emergency in 2020, with the focus on their ability to maintainthe intellectual capital value and give more points that could be investigate in the future, as, e.g. a selection ofmore than three traditional universities or with a comparative case study, useful in highlighting the strengthsand weaknesses of the decisions taken in different contexts, considering: (1) telematic universities andtraditional universities; or (2) universities located in other countries. Another future line of enquiry could be tofocus the analysis on the effective quality of the MOOCs applied at the universities’ activities, using thestudents’ opinions obtainable through OPIS (Rilevazione Opinione degli Studenti) or through direct interviews.