The Routledge Companion to Talent Management

Ibraiz Tarique

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9781315474670
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

The field of Talent Management has grown and advanced exponentially over the past several years as organizations, large and small, public and private, global and domestic, have realized that to gain and sustain a global competitive advantage, they must manage their talents effectively. Talent Management has become a major theoretical and empirical topic of intellectual curiosity from various disciplinary perspectives, such as human resource management, arts and entertainment management, international management, etc. This Companion is an indispensable source that provides an authoritative, in-depth, and comprehensive examination of emerging Talent Management topics.

Divided into five thematic sections that provide a unique overarching structure to organize forty-one chapters written by leading and renowned international scholars, this Companion assesses essential knowledge, trends, debates, and avenues for future research in a single volume: Evolution and Conceptualization of Talent Management; The External Context of Talent Management; The Internal Context of Talent Management; Individuals, Workforce, and Processes of Talent Management; and Outcomes of Talent Management.

In this way, the Companion is essential reading for anyone involved in the scholarly study of Talent Management, including academic researchers, advanced postgraduate and graduate students, and management consultants. For further debate on Talent Management, readers might be interested in the supplementary volume Contemporary Talent Management: A Research Companion, sold separately.

1

Talent Management

An Introduction

Ibraiz Tarique

DOI: 10.4324/9781315474687-1

Overview

There is considerable evidence that the field of talent management (TM) has grown exponentially over the last decade. Significant improvements have been made in understanding how the field has progressed, areas for improvement, and how the field needs to advance. A great deal of research has been conducted to assess a variety of topics across organizations, countries, and multiple levels of analyses (see Collings, 2014; Collings & Mellahi, 2009; Dries, 2013; Gallardo-Gallardo & Thunnissen, 2016; Gallardo-Gallardo, Thunnissen & Scullion, 2020; Khilji, Tarique & Schuler, 2015; Lewis & Heckman, 2006; Sparrow, Scullion, & Tarique, 2014; Tarique & Schuler, 2010; Thunnissen, Boselie, & Fruytier, 2013; Vaiman et al., 2021). Some studies have focused on different types of employee groups such as “stars” (e.g., Kang et al., 2018), high potential employees (e.g., Asplund, 2020; Jooss, McDonnell & Burbach, 2019), “A” players (e.g., Huselid, Beatty, & Becker, 2005), and expatriates (e.g., Collings, 2014).

A few studies have described trends and cross-country differences in Macro TM (e.g., Cooke, Saini, & Wang, 2014; Khilji, Tarique & Schuler, 2015; King & Vaiman, 2019; Lanvin & Monteiro, 2020) and issues related to TM in global organizations (e.g., Collings, Mellahi, & Cascio, 2019; Tarique & Schuler, 2018; Teagarden, 2020;). Others have analyzed a variety of topics such as TM practices in organizations (Latukha, 2018; Myers et al., 2020), TM and employee commitment (e.g., Luna-Arocas et al., 2020), TM in the public sector (e.g., Kravariti & Johnston, 2020), burnout among talented employees (Malik & Singh 2020), and lack of rigorous empirical investigations in TM (e.g., Thunnissen & Gallardo-Gallardo, 2019).

While interest in TM is growing, and recent research has provided valuable insight into various TM topics, there remain many opportunities for additional exploration and research; I highlight three:

• TM is multifaceted. There is a lack of consensus regarding TM's exact conceptualization illustrating the discipline's diverse nature with a multifaceted identity affected by many variables. TM is defined from a variety of perspectives depending on the context, unit of analysis, and level of analysis;
• TM is multidisciplinary. TM is continuously evolving across a variety of disciplines, including arts and entertainment, industrial/organizational psychology, military/armed forces, strategy, organizational behavior, human resource management, and cognitive psychology. The field is researched and studied by various professionals and researchers, such as management scholars, management consultants, organizational experts, labor economists, political scientists, and public administration specialists. TM is a multidisciplinary effort that involves scholars and experts from different disciplines who cooperate and work together to improve our understanding of issues related to TM;
• TM is a bridge field. The TM literature suggests that issues, problems, and ideas discussed by scholars are occasionally examined by HR/TM managers, professionals, and consultants. There is increased collaboration and transfer of knowledge between academics and practitioners, which has improved the quality of papers and findings and allowed managers and scholars to leverage each other's resources. TM can be categorized as a “bridge field.”

Thus, I edited two books: this book (Companion to Talent Management) and its partner book (Contemporary Talent Management: A Research Companion, sold separately) that bring together 105 scholars and researchers from 21 countries in the context of the three opportunities (multifaceted, multidisciplinary, and bridge field) to provide academic researchers, advanced postgraduate and graduate students, and TM research consultants with an authoritative, in-depth, and comprehensive examination of critical scholarly topics related to TM that can encourage further research. More specifically, the aim is to provide an essential resource that will assist individuals and organizations that seek the convenience of two books that cover a spectrum of scholarly research on TM.

Organization of the Book¹

This book is organized into five sections of varying lengths, each of which covers a separate agenda. Section I consists of five chapters that focus on the evolution and conceptualization of talent management. Section II consists of 11 chapters that look at TM's external context, that is, examine research and findings related to the external context within which TM takes place. Section III comprises 7 chapters that investigate the internal context of TM. More specifically, these chapters examine how TM practices are configured to support business goals and objectives. Section IV includes 13 chapters that examine individuals, the workforce, and the processes of TM. Section V brings this book to a close with three chapters that explore TM outcomes with a particular focus on assessment or the “effectiveness” of individuals, TM practices, and TM systems.

Chapter Topics

Section I

As mentioned earlier, chapters in section I focus on the evolution and conceptualization of talent management. Paul Sparrow (Chapter 2) provides a historical analysis of TM research, offers insights into where the field is today, and provides current and new researchers a way to move forward. David Collings and Dana Minbaeva in Chapter 3 provide a mapping of conceptual boundaries using a micro-foundational approach as a diagnostic tool to help us identify some of the essential but under-researched issues that future research in this critical field must explore. Chapter 4 by Karin King introduces the organizational TM system from the perspective of the employee's participation in the workforce. Kushal Sharma (Chapter 5) uses the resource-based theory to argue that if the field is to advance and become relevant to practice, it needs to adopt a dynamic capabilities view because of the limitations of the static view of talent. The final chapter in this section is by Heba Makram (Chapter 6), who lays out an updated broader framework of Value to describe how TM adds Value to earlier four value-driven processes.

Section II

Eleven chapters in section II examine TM from a macro or an external perspective and discuss research and findings related to the external context within which TM occurs. There are four chapters dedicated to the emerging topic of macro talent management.

Chapter 7 by Violetta Khoreva and Vlad Vaiman examines how macro and micro environments affect decision making at the organizational and individual levels. Shaista Khilji and Ramien Pierre, in Chapter 8, further establish macro global talent management (MGTM) as an interdisciplinary concept and present five domains that directly impact TM systems within organizational, national, and international contexts. The notion of talent competitiveness at the country level is examined in Chapter 9 by Paul Evans, Eduardo Rodriguez-Montemayor, and Bruno Lanvin. These authors take an interdisciplinary approach that jointly considers organizational practices and broader economic and social forces that shape talent development. Building on Chapter 9, Paul Evans, Eduardo Rodriguez-Montemayor, and Bruno Lanvin discuss their empirical model and database called the Global Talent Competitiveness Index (GTCI) in Chapter 10 and show how GTCI can frame the complexities of country/city level TM in a logical way that stimulates both research and policy change. The next five chapters in this section focus on selected TM issues at the regional/country level of analysis. Fang Lee Cooke examines TM issues in Asia in Chapter 11 and TM issues in Africa in Chapter 12. Jordi Trullen and Jaime Bonache in Chapter 13 look at Latin America, while Agnieszka Skuza and Hugh Scullion focus on Europe in Chapter 14. The next chapter (Chapter 15) by Jean-Luc Cerdin, Chris Brewster, and Lovanirina Ramboarison-Lalao discusses how migrants are being, or are not being, integrated into Global Talent Management. Paul Boselie, Marian Thunnissen, and Joost Monster in Chapter 16 focus on TM in public sector organizations and particularly on the current knowledge regarding the linkage between TM and performance in the public sector. The final chapter in this section, Chapter 17 by Marian Thunnissen, Pleun van Arensbergen, and Marieke van den Brink, looks at how TM is organized in academic institutions.

Section III

Seven chapters in section III of this book focus on TM issues that are internal to an organization. Maria Christina Meyers and Anneloes Bal, in Chapter 18, visit the traditional topic of the nature versus nurture debate in TM. In the next chapter, Marion Festing and Lynn Schäfer (Chapter 19) focus on the interplay of heterogeneous workforces (especially concerning age and generational challenges) and TM. Dagmar Daubner-Siva, in the next chapter (Chapter 20), provides an understanding of the (dis-) connect between TM and diversity management in an attempt to dovetail the fields. Chapter 21 by Nicky Dries, Elise Marescaux, and Anand van Zelderen compares and contrasts the TM versus the career management literature, highlighting areas of overlap and contradiction, and their implications for research and practice. In Chapter 22, Stephen Swailes examines TM within business ethics, focusing on the individual and evolutionary nature of talent to highlight ethical implications. Jennie Sumelius and Adam Smale, in Chapter 23, examine the issues relating to talent communication and strategic ambiguity in TM communication. In the final chapter (Chapter 24) of this section, Sharna Wiblen examines the strategic Value of talent and information technology (IT), focusing on the interrelationship between the two fields.

Section IV

As ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Foreword
• Contributors
• 1 Talent Management: An Introduction
• SECTION I Evolution and Conceptualization of Talent Management
• SECTION II The External Context of Talent Management
• SECTION III The Internal Context of Talent Management
• SECTION IV Individuals, Workforce, and Processes of Talent Management
• SECTION V Outcomes of Talent Management