Contemporary Talent Management

A Research Companion

Ibraiz Tarique

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781032022987
• eBook ISBN: 9781000441987
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

The field of talent management has grown and advanced exponentially over the past several years as an essential area of research. While interest in the field is growing, and recent research has provided valuable insight into various topics, there remain many opportunities for additional exploration and research. One such opportunity is to examine talent management topics related to the modern workforce and organizations – an area identified as contemporary talent management.

Divided into two thematic sections that provide a unique overarching structure to organize 18 chapters written by leading and renowned international scholars, this Research Companion assesses essential knowledge, trends, debates, and avenues for future research in a single volume. Some of the topics examined from a contemporary talent management perspective include Executive Search, Gifted Early Career Individuals, Managing Diverse Talents, Gender Sensitive Talent Management, Aging Global Workforce, Leadership Wisdom, Learning Agility, Employee Engagement, Entrepreneurship, Intrapreneurship, Small Business Enterprises, Talent Flow, Green HR, Gig Workers, and Mergers and Acquisitions.

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

1 Contemporary Talent Management

An Introduction

Ibraiz Tarique

DOI: 10.4324/9781003182788-1

Interest in talent management among academics, practitioners, and students has grown rapidly in recent years. Rapid growth in a relatively short period is evidenced in a range of empirical and theoretical contributions to academic journals and scholarly books (e.g., Vaiman, Schuler, Collings, & Sparrow, 2020; Collings, Mellahi, & Cascio, 2019; Collings, Scullion, & Caligiuri, 2019 Sparrow, Scullion, & Tarique, 2014; Al Ariss, 2014) (For a progressive overview on the state of research on talent management, see McDonnell & Wiblen, 2021; Thunnissen & Gallardo-Gallardo, 2019; McDonnell, Collings, Mellahi, & Schuler, 2017; Gallardo-Gallardo & Thunnissen, 2016; Gallardo-Gallardo et al., 2015; Tarique & Schuler, 2010; Collings & Mellahi, 2009; Lewis & Heckman, 2006).

Over the past decade, growth of knowledge and interest in talent management has increased in importance for researchers in human resource management, organizational behavior, organizational psychology, international human resource management, and labour economics and for practitioners in major management consulting firms and multinational enterprises. The formation of a robust talent management community has also enabled researchers from around the world to make significant advances in understanding how best to optimize talent management in a variety of contexts (Vaiman et al., 2021; Gallardo-Gallardo, Thunnissen, & Scullion, 2020; Gallardo-Gallardo & Thunnissen, 2016; Khilji, Tarique, & Schuler, 2015; Collings, 2014a,b; Sparrow et al., 2014; Thunnissen, Boselie, & Fruytier, 2013; Dries, 2013; Vaiman et al., 2020 Tarique & Schuler, 2010; Collings & Mellahi, 2009).

From its inception, a critical debate in the talent management literature has been around the definition of “talent management” itself. The diversity of opinions, and arguments, among scholars and thought leaders, is unsurprising since talent management has attracted the attention of a broad range of business disciplines, including human resource management (and international human resource management), organizational behavior, industrial and organizational psychology, business strategy, international management, and labor economics.

There is a parable about three blind men arguing over the appearance of an elephant. Because each man holds a different part of the elephant—trunk, tail, and ear—they reach vastly different conclusions, and much argument ensues about who is “right.” Similarly, opinions about the “true” nature of talent management arise from the varying perspectives of individual business disciplines and the concomitant aims and goals of their research. What should not be and is not disputed, however, is that the nascent field of talent management holds the promise of a wide and fascinating body of research that can be usefully applied and learned from across the whole of business studies.

Conceptual and Intellectual Boundaries of Talent Management

In this introductory chapter, I discuss the conceptual and intellectual boundaries of talent management, introduce the notion of contemporary talent management and then describe the structure of the book.

The often quite different meanings attributed to the term “talent management” depend on context, unit of analysis, and level of analysis. According to several scholars (e.g., Lewis & Heckman, 2006; Collings & Mellahi, 2009; Tarique & Schuler, 2010; Sparrow & Makram, 2015), talent management can be conceptualized from six different but related perspectives reflecting a variety of theoretical approaches and backgrounds. The first perspective considers talent management as a replacement for human resource management. Here the word “talent” replaces the term “human resource” in human resource management. This perspective has two opposing explanations. One is that the field of human resource management has evolved from the early stages of personnel management (in the 1970s) to human resource management (in the 1980s and 1990s ) to strategic human resource management (in 1990s and 2000),and now to talent management. The other is the position that talent management is an alternative to human resource management and that the two are in an existential fight for primacy.

The second perspective views talent management as a collection of possible configurations or bundles of sophisticated and advanced human resource management policies and practices that cover four responsibilities: attracting, developing, retaining, and mobilizing talent. This perspective has its theoretical roots in the strategic human resource management literature (e.g., Schuler, 2015; Becker, Beatty, & Huselid, 2009; Lepak & Snell, 2002; Schuler & Jackson, 1987). The third perspective focuses on employees who have exceptional high level of human capital (i.e., high levels of skills, abilities, and experiences), are difficult to replace, perform at high levels, and “add a disproportionate amount of value to the organization compared to other employees” (Sparrow & Makram, 2015, p. 251). In this literature, these employees with high levels of human capital are rated as “A” players (e.g., Huselid, Beatty, & Becker, 2005), high potentials or HiPos (e.g., Ready, Conger, & Hill, 2010), and stars (e.g., Oldroyd & Morris, 2012). This perspective has theoretical support from the human capital theory literature (e.g., Becker, 1964).

The fourth perspective views talent management in terms of strategic or core jobs/positions. To do this, the terminology of “Type A positions,” “Type B positions,” and “Type C positions” (Collings & Mellahi, 2009; Huselid, Beatty, & Becker, 2005) is used to categorize jobs/positions according to its contribution to organizational success. An important assumption here is that jobs/positions that contribute significantly more to organizational success warrant more resources, time, energy, development and investments (Sparrow & Makram, 2015; Tarique & Schuler, 2010). Theoretical support for this perspective is found in the strategic human resource management and the job design literatures (e.g., Becker & Huselid, 2010). The fifth perspective considers talent management in terms of “strategic talent pools,” which refer to groups of talented employees whose competencies are critical to an organization’s ability to execute its business strategy (Boudreau & Ramstad, 2006; Collings & Mellahi, 2009). Within this perspective, there is considerable emphasis on the movement of talent pools throughout the organization to improve organizational outcomes such as competitiveness and performance. This perspective has its theoretical foundation in the workforce analytics, human resource planning, and the succession planning literatures (e.g., Huselid, 2018).

From the sixth perspective, talent management is considered a human resource management function along with other core human resources functions such as staffing, training and developing, performance management, compensation, employee health and safety, labour relations etc; here, a large part of the talent management function focuses on leadership development, succession planning, and executive development. The seventh and final perspective views talent management in the broader context of international human resource management (IHRM). This perspective emphasis the complex endogenous and exogenous relationships within international organizations, such as between a multinational enterprise and the talent management processes that exist within the organization. Seminal international human resource theory provides the foundation for understanding this perspective (see Schuler, Dowling, & De Cieri, 1993; Taylor, Beechler, & Napier, 1996; for a recent review on IHRM, see Sanders & De Cieri, 2020).

The seven conceptual views demonstrate the broad application of talent management for quite different purposes and at multiple levels of analysis. Some scholars argue that this expansive range of applications reflects a lack of clarity that, together with an absence of a unified definition of talent management, has complicated theory development and concept operationalization and slowed the progress in empirical testing. According to Collings (2014b, p. 250), “the lack of consensus over its conceptual and intellectual boundaries has led to a degree of confusion and indeed skepticism as to its value.” Similarly, McDonnell et al., (2017, p. 93) note, “A key constraint on the development of such a grand theory appears to be a lack of conceptual boundaries as to what Talent Management actually encompasses (and does not).” Concerns about capturing talent management in a precise, fine-grained way are expressed by several authors in different contexts. For example, Collings and Mellahi (2009), in the context of organizational strategy, view strategic talent management as,

Activities and processes that involve the systematic identification of key positions which differentially contribute to the organization’s sustainable competitive advantage, the development of a talent pool of high potential and high performing incumbents to fill these roles, and the development of a differentiated human resource architecture to facilitate filling these positions with competent incumbents and to ensure t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Information
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• List of Contributors
• 1 Contemporary Talent Management: An Introduction
• Section I The Processes of Talent Management
• Section II The External and Internal Contexts of Talent Management Processes
• Index