Global Talent Management

An Integrated Approach

Sonal Minocha, Dean Hristov

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781526424235, 9781526424228
• eBook ISBN: 9781526457370
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

This textbook provides the theory and practice context of Global Talent Management within an accessible conceptual framework for students, spanning individuals (micro), organisations (meso) and policy (macro). 

Including discussions on the development of self as global talent and current organisational approaches to the attraction, development and retention of global talent, this book encourages critical reflection of how global talent management is affected by policy, society and the economy. The authors draw on interdisciplinary fields, practical insights from global employers and wide-ranging case studies to help students grasp the complexities of this evolving field. 

 

Part I Individuals as Global Talent

1 Developing Mindsets, Heartsets And Skillsets

Chapter contents

• Demystifying the concept of global talent
  • An introduction
  • Global talent and globalisation
  • Global talent and the wider management literature
  • Defining global talent in a world of work context
• Developing global mindset attributes
  • Bennett’s concept of ‘mindsets’ and its global dimension
  • Global competence as a core global mindset attribute
• Developing global heartset attributes
  • Bennett’s concept of ‘heartsets’ and its global dimension
  • Emotional intelligence as a core global heartset attribute
• Developing global skillset attributes
  • Bennett’s concept of ‘skillsets’ and its global dimension
  • Learnability as a core global skillset attribute
• Global talent activity

Learning objectives

After reading this chapter, you will be able to:

• articulate the concept of global talent and how it relates to human resource management
• appreciate the different definitions of global talent, including the one adopted in this text
• understand the concept of global mindsets, heartsets, skillsets and related attributes
• evaluate yourself as global talent.

Demystifying the concept of global talent

An introduction

Global talent and the concept of talent can be found in common parlance, sometimes as a buzzword, but mostly for its significance to organisations and economies at large. According to Ilian Mihov, Dean at INSEAD Business School, one of the world’s leading and largest graduate business schools, talent is now increasingly seen as a currency (Adecco Group, 2015) and as a competitive advantage that is sought after by organisations, cities, regions and nations:

We live in a world where talent has become the core currency of competitiveness – for businesses and national economies alike. Businesses and governments need new kinds of leaders and entrepreneurs, equipped with the skills that will help their firms and countries to thrive in the global knowledge economy.

Undoubtedly, a lot has been written and is still being written about talent, considering how important talent is to organisations, businesses and national economies. We look at the concept and its definitions in greater detail next in order to frame the foundations of this text.

Talent and globalisation

One of the big five global management-consulting firms, McKinsey and Co., provides the most cited and widely accepted definition of talent through a seminal study compiled by consultants Ed Michaels, Helen Handfield-Jones and Beth Axelrod – The War for Talent (Michaels et al., 2001).

Talent is ‘the sum of a person’s abilities … his or her intrinsic gifts, skills, knowledge, experience, intelligence, judgment, attitude, character and drive. It also includes his or her ability to learn and grow’, Michaels et al. argue (2001: xii). Twenty one years on, the study is still relevant in defining and contextualising the notion of talent in the world of work.

However, within a world of unprecedented challenges, industry demands new kinds of talent, which can ‘learn and grow’ (Michaels et al., 2001) and quickly adapt to a range of macro-level political, environmental and societal trends and developments which are occurring on a global scale. These macro-level trends include globalisation, constant technological innovations and demographic developments, emphasising the need to prepare future-ready and globally-aware talent.

Professor Ian Goldin, of Oxford University, argued in his book that ‘globalisation is an increase in the impact on human activities of forces that span national boundaries’ (Goldin and Reinert, 2013: 2). The forces of globalisation, together with rapid technological advancements, require a forward-thinking workforce – global talent with the dexterity and expertise to think and work globally.

Global talent and the wider management literature

Since The War for Talent, a plethora of texts have discussed the concept of global talent. This extant literature has covered important interrelated concepts and developments that go hand in hand with global talent, including:

• the management of global talent (Schuler et al., 2011; Stahl et al., 2012)
• the competition for global talent (Beechler and Woodward, 2009)
• global perspectives of talent management (Scullion and Collings, 2011)
• global talent mobility (Welch and Zhen, 2008)
• the conceptualisation of talent (Adamsen, 2016)
• global talent policy (Allan, 2006)
• the global talent supply pipeline (Gordon, 2009).

Directly relevant to our work is Gordon’s (2009) critical account of the challenge in developing a well-rounded future workforce, which draws particular focus to the education to employment link in his book, Winning the Global Talent Showdown: How Businesses and Communities Can Partner to Rebuild the Jobs Pipeline. He contends that the education system is outdated and broken, and fails to prepare students with the skills they need to thrive in the rapidly changing workforce and workplace of the future. Similarly, Adamsen’s (2016) Demystifying Talent Management: A Critical Approach to the Realities of Talent is pertinent in its conceptualisation of talent, albeit without a global dimension to it. In Global Talent Management, Scullion and Collings (2011) provide a discussion on recent theoretical contributions in the area of global talent management, key challenges and opportunities facing the field and emerging developments around global talent management in key economies such as China, India, the Middle East and Eastern Europe.

Specifically, HR management students and professionals may be interested in exploring further texts that specifically discuss talent management (see, for example, Brewster et al., 2011 and Scullion and Collings, 2011). Also pertinent is Johnson’s work (2014) which advances our understanding of how organisations can prepare for and capitalise on major global talent trends. In their ‘Global Talent Management’ chapter in The Routledge Companion to International Human Resource Management, Vaiman and Collings (2014) put the spotlight on organisational approaches to global talent management and provide a critical discussion on the global context of global talent management. Scullion and Collings (2011) discuss emerging trends in global talent management in emerging economies such as China, India, the Middle East and Eastern Europe.

This textbook builds on these works by providing a comprehensive and more integrative perspective on global talent management and does not focus merely on the HR aspects of talent management.

International perspectives on talent tend to focus on the issues and challenges related to mobility and migration specifically. For example, Cerna (2016) provides a comprehensive account of the interplay between the highly skilled migration of global talent and immigration policy in her book Immigration Policies and the Global Competition for Talent. Through the adoption of a global talent policy perspective, the author provides a critical account of high-skilled immigration policies of countries seen as hubs for global talent. Gender, Migration and the Global Race for Talent by Boucher (2016) reflects on international country-level policy and practice in skilled migration with a particular focus on gender. The author provides an in-depth discussion of the rationale behind governments’ decision making to adopt gender-aware skilled immigration policies for global talent. Similarly, Duncan (2012) provides a comparative account of the legal and political efforts and challenges in managing the recruitment of high-skilled global talent in the text Immigration Policymaking in the Global Era: In Pursuit of Global Tale...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Publisher Note
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Part I Individuals as Global Talent
• 1 Developing Mindsets, Heartsets And Skillsets
• 2 Job seekers and job creators
• 3 Understanding the cross-cultural and multi-generational workforce
• 4 Thriving in the 4IR: workplace automation and artificial intelligence
• Part II Organisations as Hubs for Global Talent
• 5 Organisational foundations for global talent
• 6 Attraction, development and retention of global talent
• 7 Performance, productivity and analytics in global talent management
• Part III Global Talent Policy Perspectives
• 8 Demographic disruptions (re)shaping the global talent landscape
• 9 Economic competitiveness and the role of global talent
• 10 The role of global talent in shaping cities, regions and economies
• 11 The global talent mismatch and the role of education
• Index