Global Talent Management

David G. Collings, Hugh Scullion, Paula M. Caligiuri, David G. Collings, Hugh Scullion, Paula M. Caligiuri

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138712447
• eBook ISBN: 9781351778268
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

The second edition of Global Talent Management (GTM) offers a state of the art overview of the key areas of talent management in theory and practice. Drawing on contributions from the leading global contributors to talent management research, the book is structured around three key sections. Section one provides a contextual overview of talent management. The second section explores in depth some of the core areas of GTM practice which includes the meaning of talent in the global context, internal talent identification, developing leadership talent, employee turnover, employer branding and the role of the corporate HR function in GTM. The final section considers three key contemporary issues in GTM, namely, data analytics in GTM, managing virtual talent and managing globally diverse talent.

The chapters in the volume provide advanced undergraduate or postgraduate students with an interest in global talent management with a cutting-edge overview of the key topics in the field. It is also an invaluable resource for the reflective practitioner looking for an overview of key research in this important area of practice.

Section 1
The Context of Global Talent Management

1
Global Talent Management

An Introduction

David G. Collings, Hugh Scullion and Paula M. Caligiuri

Talent matters, and organizations globally are increasingly recognizing the challenges of managing talent effectively in delivering on their strategic agendas (Collings et al., 2017; McDonnell et al., 2017). Indeed, a recent study of CEOs in the US identified managing talent, operating in the global marketplace and regulation and legislation as the top three challenges they faced (Groysberg and Connolly, 2015). It is equally clear that organizations continue to struggle in managing talent effectively. One indicator of this failure is the fact that over 70% of CEOs globally identify a lack of availability of skills and capabilities as a key threat to the growth prospects of their organizations (PWC, 2017). As Groysberg and Connolly’s study of CEOs highlighted, the added complexity of managing in the global environment increases the challenge of managing talent on a global basis. Equally, the global political landscape has the potential to significantly impact on global talent management (GTM) practice. At the time of writing (May 2018), the negotiation around Brexit raises significant questions for organizations planning on moving employees to the UK and indeed creates many uncertainties for EU citizens currently living and working there. Similarly, in the US under the Trump administration, there is considerable uncertainty around the H1-B visa programme, which was central to facilitating the movement of key talent from abroad to the US for work purposes, and broader concerns around the talent landscape in the US (Horak et al., 2018). A key example of the outcome of this uncertainty in the US context was Microsoft’s decision to open a new office in Vancouver, Canada, as a means of accessing the available talent in the Canadian context and somewhat mitigating the challenges in the US.

This introductory chapter has four main aims. First, it seeks to review some definitions of global talent management and to consider the particular challenges of talent management in the global context. Second, it examines the main factors associated with the growing importance of GTM. Third, it outlines the distinctive contribution of this volume, which seeks to critically review important theoretical and empirical developments in the area of GTM over the last decade. The final section provides a brief summary for each of the chapters in the book to help the reader to quickly identify the main themes and issues covered in each of the chapters.

Defining Global Talent Management: Exploring the Conceptual and Intellectual Boundaries of Global Talent Management

In the ten years since the first edition of this volume was published, the literature on talent management has expanded considerably. In the introduction to the last volume, we argued that despite a decade of debate around the importance of talent management for success in global business, most of the literature in this field had remained practitioner or consultancy based (e.g. Bryan et al., 2006; Guthridge et al., 2008), not well grounded in research and often over- dependent on anecdotal evidence. This led to considerable criticism of the concept of talent management as lacking adequate definition and theoretical development, particularly in the global context. One of the key challenges which we identified in establishing the academic merits of talent management at that time was the unresolved issue around its conceptual and intellectual boundaries (Lewis and Hackman, 2006; Collings and Mellahi, 2009; Scullion et al., 2010). As Lewis and Hackman (2006: 139) concluded at around that time, there was “a disturbing lack of clarity regarding the definition, scope and overall goals of talent management”.

While we certainly don’t have answers to all of the questions which emerge in the context of talent management, it is clear that the literature has moved on significantly in that time. Indeed, a recent review demonstrated that over 85% of articles on talent management were published between 2010 and 2015, when that review was conducted (Gallardo-Gallardo et al., 2015; see also McDonnell et al., 2017). This reinforces the importance of the timing of the previous volume of this text in the evolution of global talent management and in providing an excellent platform for the discussions which the author team pick up on in the current revision.

Broadly, the literature identifies a number of different ways in which talent management tends to be used in the literature. In their seminal review, Lewis and Hackman (2006) identified three key streams of thinking with regard to what talent management was. The authors aligned with the first stream appear to be largely substituting the label talent management for human resource management, often limiting their focus to particular HR practices such as recruitment, leadership development, succession planning and the like. A second stream emphasizes the development of talent pools, focusing on “projecting employee/staffing needs and managing the progression of employees through positions” (Lewis and Hackman, 2006: 140), typically building upon earlier research in the manpower planning or succession planning literatures. The third stream focuses on the management of talented people. This literature argues that all roles within the organization should be filled with “A performers”, referred to as “topgrading” (Smart, 1999), and emphasizes the management of “C players”, or consistently poor performers, out of the organization (Michaels et al., 2001).

Collings and Mellahi (2009) identified a further stream which emphasizes the identification of key positions which have the potential to differentially impact the competitive advantage of the firm (Boudreau and Ramstad, 2007; Huselid et al., 2005). More recently, Vaiman et al. (2012) identify the theme of the use of data and analytics in making more informed decisions around talent as a fifth key theme in the talent management literature. A final area which is emerging as a key theme in talent management of late is the management of non-employees in organizations. This can refer to freelancers operating in the gig economy but also includes arrangements such as talent sharing between companies through secondments, or other non- traditional means of engaging talent (Cascio and Boudreau, 2016).

As yet there is certainly no single definition of or approach to talent management which has become universally accepted, and multinational enterprises (MNEs) approach talent in a range of ways. That said, global talent management has been defined in broad terms as an organization’s efforts to attract, select, develop and retain key talented employees on a global scale (Stahl et al., 2012). A key aspect of this definition is the focus on a key group of core employees, rather than the MNE’s entire human capital pool (see also Becker et al., 2009; Boudreau and Ramstad, 2007; Collings and Mellahi, 2009). This is premised on the idea that the management of the MNE’s core workforce will have the greatest impact on value creation and sustainable competitive advantage (Collings et al., 2018; Delery and Shaw, 2001). This definition emphasizes an international focus and emphasizes the role of MNEs’ internal systems in ensuring key strategic employees are attracted, retained and deployed to best meet the organization’s strategic priorities.

However, as noted previously, a separate stream of literature (Boudreau and Ramstad, 2007; Collings and Mellahi, 2009; Huselid et al., 2005) emphasizes the importance of the positions which these talented individual employees fill in the context of talent management systems and argues that this should be the point of departure for talent management systems. This is premised on the idea that there are many positions in organizations where top-performing employees have limited potential to deliver additional value beyond an average employee. Hence, a high performer’s capacity to deliver high performance may be constrained by being in the wrong role.

Building on this literature on pivotal positions, we adopt Mellahi and Collings’ (2010: 143) definition of GTM (see also Collings et al., 2018). This definition builds on Collings and Mellahi’s initial work on talent management and extends it into the global context. The initial definition has been identified as the most widely adopted definition of talent management in the academic literature (Gallardo-Gallardo et al., 2015), and hence represents a useful starting point for our consideration of GTM. They define global talent management as:

The systematic identification of key positions which differentially contribute to the organization’s sustainable competitive advantage on a global scale, the development of a talent pool of high potential and high performing incumbents to fill these roles which reflects the global scope of the MNE, and the development of a differentiated human resource architecture to facilitate filling these positions with the best available incumbent and to ensure their continued commitment to the organization.

This definition positions GTM more broadly than leadership succession, which is often the focus for many executives. It highlights key positions which have the greatest potential to impact on differential value generation in the organization. These positions are distinguished by two key factors. Firstly, they are central to the organizational strategy. Secondly, the potential for significant variation in performance exists when the quality or quantity of people in the roles increases. Once these positions are identified, the definition emphasizes the importance of creating a pipeline of talent to fill these positions. In the MNE context a key consideration is how the membership of the global talent pool maps to the geographic footprint of the MNE. In other words, how should the talent pool membership look in terms of relative numbers of headquarters (HQ) employees, or parent country nationals versus subsidiary employees, host country or third-country nationals? This decision will be strongly influenced by the MNE’s strategic orientation (Collings et al., 2018). Finally, in contrast to earlier approaches to HR which emphasized standardized approaches to HR in organizations, the definition advocated differentiating the HR system for members of the talent pool and critical roles. Hence, it is reflective of wider trends in the HR literature which recognize the limitations of an overly simplistic perspective on investments in human capital and questions the value of a single “optimal” HR architecture for managing all employees (Collings, 2017; Lepak and Snell, 1999). In fact, the notion of differentiation recognizes that a single set of “best” HR practices can actually destroy value in organizations, hence advocating greater differentiation in decision making (Bonabeau, 2004). However, the global context makes implementing a differentiated approach to talent management particularly challenging (Collings et al., 2018). The challenges of aligning talent management programmes with MNE strategy are explored in detail by Collings et al. (2018).

Collings et al. (2018) advocate a contingency approach to global talent management where the GTM system is aligned with the MNE strategy. However, their analysis is focused on endogenous influences (factors internal to the MNE), and we also point to the importance of exogenous influences (factors external to the MNE) on the operation of GTM. Thus, it is equally important that we gain increasing understanding of differences in how talent management is defined and conducted in different national contexts. This comparative understanding will also be important as the field matures. Such an understanding should help to counteract an overly ethnocentric or Anglo-Saxon conceptualization of talent management gaining hegemonic dominance, which is not reflective of practice. Comparative studies which consider how talent management systems operate in different national contexts is also hugely valuable. This theme is explored in two recent volumes in the Global HRM Series (Vaiman et al., 2018a; 2018b) and also in King and Vaiman’s chapter in the current volume (see Chapter 2).

Factors Influencing the Growth of Global Talent Management

In considering the current state of GTM research and practice, it is useful to consider the factors which explain its emergence as a key strategic issue for MNEs. Some of these have been outlined by Scullion et al. (2010) and are developed as follows:

• The effective management of human resources is increasingly recognized as a major determinant of success or failure in international business. In this regard, there is a growing recognition both of the critical role played by globally competent managerial talent in ensuring the success of MNEs reflecting the intensification of global competition and the greater need for international learning and innovation in MNEs (Bartlett and Ghoshal, 1989). Indeed, there is a growing recognition that the success of global business depends most importantly on the quality of top management in the MNE (Black et al., 2000; Collings et al., 2007; Cascio and Boudreau, 2016; Scullion and Starkey, 2000).
• However, shortages of international managers have become an increasing problem for international firms and have been a significant constraint on the implementation of global strategies (Scullion, 1994; Stahl et al., 2012; Farndale et al., 2010). Indeed, shortages of managerial and professional talent have emerged as a key HR challenge facing the majority of MNEs (Bjorkman and Lervik, 2007; Collings and Isichei, 2018; Sparrow et al., 2014), and research highlights that shortages of leadership talent are a major obstacle facing many companies as they seek to operate successfully on a global scale (Bird and Mendenhall, 2016; Caligiuri and Dragoni, this volume, Chapter 7; PWC, 2017; Scullion and Brewster, 2001; Stahl et al., 2012).
• Competition among employers for talent has shifted from the country level to the regional and global levels (Sparrow et al., 2004; Vaiman et al., 2018a, 2018b). There is a growing recognition that MNEs need to manage talent on a global basis to remain competitive and that talent may be located in different parts of their global operations (Ready and Conger, 2007; Caligiuri and Bonache, 2016). This requires MNEs to coordinate their talent pipelines at the regional and global levels. However, in practice many MNCs compete for the same global talent pool and face considerable challenges in recruiting and retaining the leadership and managerial talent required to effectively run their global operations (Collings et al., 2018; Stahl et al., 2012).
• Talent management issues are becoming increasingly significant in a far wider range of organizations than previously due to the rapid growth in internationalization of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and the emergence of “micromultinationals” in recent years (Dimitratos et al., 2003; Krishnan and Scullion, 2017) highlights the importance of developing a global mindset among SME leaders who seek to compete in the global marketplace SMEs.
• Demographic trends also influence the nature of the talent management challenges facing organizations (Tung, 2016; McDonnell et al., 2017; Vaiman et al., 2018a, 2018b). Declining birthrates and increasing longevity are the key demographic trends driving a rapid shift in the age distribution of the g...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Contributors
• Foreword
• Section 1: The Context of Global Talent Management
• Section 2: Global Talent Management in Practice
• Section 3: Contemporary Challenges in Global Talent Management
• Index