Talent development: a systematic literature review of empirical studies

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to identify and examine findings from empirical research regarding organizations’ talent development (TD) strategies, taking into consideration the countries in which the studies were conducted and the TD-approach organizations adopted, and recognize the positive outcomes of TD implementation, as well as potential issues and challenges.

Design/methodology/approach

This systematic literature review used Garrard’s matrix method to organize the review of publications. It identified 31 empirical articles from the total of 551 publications.

Findings

The findings indicate that a majority of the studies were conducted in countries other than the USA and that they were all published recently, after 2007. The results show that organizations have mostly applied organizational development interventions at the individual level for developing talented employees, followed by formal training and development. Additionally, managerial issues were identified as the most common issue on the way of implementing TD interventions.

Research limitations/implications

Trying to define TD as a discrete concept from HRD could be considered as both differentiating the current literature review and a limitation.

Originality/value

This article is among the first to identify TD interventions through a systematic literature review and provides a model of TD’s intervention antecedents and outcomes for the follow-up empirical works.

Citation

Rezaei, F. and Beyerlein, M. (2018), "Talent development: a systematic literature review of empirical studies", European Journal of Training and Development, Vol. 42 No. 1/2, pp. 75-90. https://doi.org/10.1108/EJTD-09-2017-0076