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The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of how talent management (TM) unfolds in practice in a public organization.

An exploratory single case study was conducted of a Swedish public hospital, based on interviews, observations and documents.

The findings illustrate that despite a highly egalitarian and collectivist context, the hospital adopted an exclusive approach to TM, and a talent was not considered or identified through formal performance appraisals, but through informal criteria. The rationale behind this approach is influenced by the surrounding context, including the implementation of an innovative and strategically important practice, and the highly professionalized context.

The study offered a rich view of how TM unfolds in practice, which may not always be possible using large sample, survey studies; however, it limited the generalizability.

The study points to important issues when designing TM.

The paper addresses two main shortcomings in the TM literature: the under-researched context of public organizations and the lack of contextual awareness. The empirically driven analysis constitutes an important step for further theory development regarding exclusive/inclusive approaches in TM.

Two research questions are asked in this paper: RQ1. How does line management involvement in PA work unfold in practice? RQ2. How does line management involvement contribute toward any divergence arising between intended and implemented PA work?

An in-depth case study from a multi-actor perspective based on interviews with HR managers, line managers and employees, and organizational documents.

The findings illustrate how line managers faced three types of complexities during implementation, i.e. dilemmas, understandings, and local adaptations. These jointly contributed to a divergence arising between the PA as intended and the PA as implemented. This divergence became associated with how line management involvement was restricted to the local context and the initial stages of the PA process, highlighting how HR practices can contain both devolved and non-devolved elements.

We respond to calls for more in-depth qualitative studies of how line managers are involved in HR work; this is done specifically by conceptualizing the complexities line managers face in practice when implementing HR practices. As such, we add to the understanding of HR practices as relational and social in nature. We also contribute to the processual understanding of HRM by highlighting how HR practices can contain both devolved and non-devolved elements. By stressing the limitations of binary conceptualizations of HR devolution, we add to the understanding of HR devolution as more complex and multifaceted than traditionally assumed.

The purpose of this paper is to advance the understanding of how intellectual capital (IC) unfolds in practice in organizations. This is done by answering the research question of how IC is recognized and managed in practice as expressed by managers.

An explorative, empirical and multiple case study was conducted, investigating four Swedish firms.

This paper illustrates how IC was recognized and managed in practice despite managers expressing uncertainty of what the IC concept means. More or less direct, formalized and purposeful ways were adopted. The IC elements and practices most important from a management perspective were those aligned with the overall strategy, but were seldom what was visible in financial reports.

The use of an explorative, multiple case study limits the generalizability. However, the rich view gained of how IC unfolds in practice may not always be possible using large sample, survey-studies. Future research is therefore suggested to take this paper’s insights further and investigate IC in other organizations and in other national contexts.

This paper responds to the calls for third stage IC research, by showing how IC management in practice may not be as clear and straightforward as researchers tend to assume. It also adds to the importance debate on IC accountingization, by reflecting on how an accounting dominance may not fully capture IC inside organizations. A number of practical contributions are also made.

Women-led enterprises can count on intellectual capital (IC) to implement a knowledge exchange process, improve managerial skills and provide themselves with more certain and reasonable financial resources. Recently, the literature has recognized a new paradigm of innovation, known as open innovation (OI) that emphasizes the strategic importance of relationships for knowledge development. The paper, first, aims to investigate if IC can support female agri-start-ups’ innovation process. Second, the aim is to analyse the ways in which IC supports female agri-start-ups.

The work uses a qualitative methodology and a multiple case study supports the paper. Data were acquired using direct semi-structured interviews. To read and interpret them, the authors resorted to the C.A.O.S. model that permits examining the direct relationships in terms of relational capital (RC) and also, observing the effect produced by the relational circuit in terms of human capital (HC) and structural capital (SC) in small and medium enterprises.

Findings reveal that RC plays a fundamental role in innovative start-up's development. The S-C and S-O links support business management and help fill the gender financial gap. This leads to improving entrepreneurial skills (HC) and promoting internal innovative solutions (SC). The S-A links can help the entrepreneur acquire more awareness of the market and compete better.

The research contributes to IC and gender studies, with a specific focus on RC and the innovation process. Although the literature has already investigated the role of RC in female entrepreneurship, only few previous research have conducted a qualitative analysis about the relationships established in the peculiar context of innovative agri-start-ups.

Conventional economic contexts and value creation exert on the extensive use of intangible resources whose value is much greater than the tangible assets. In particular, intellectual capital (IC) is recognized as an important source of value creation for firms. However, the field of IC is majorly dominated by large firms, and little has been done in exploring IC in small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Within this context, the purpose of this article is to contribute to the body of literature on IC in the SMEs context by investigating the different dynamics of IC and understanding its impact on their organizational performance and processes.

The study has contextualized an integrative review of literature collected from Web of Science (WoS) and further analyzed integrating the bibliometric and manual review in a systematic approach.

The paper summarizes the key findings highlighting how SMEs can grasp IC in their core competencies and operational processes to achieve sustainable business performance. The study provides theoretical propositions highlighting the conceptual underpinnings of the literature on IC in SMEs and proposed methods outlining the methodological issues arising out of the diverse empirical/quantitative approaches adopted in the previous literature. Furthermore, empirical findings from the literature show that IC management affects a broad range of financial performance metrics in SMEs, however, sometimes with unexpected and mixed results. Hence, more research to replicate prior studies and corroborate extant research in both similar and different contexts would be desirable.

The study adopts an integrative review to understand the context of IC in SMEs; however, it does not study the synergy between varied IC components individually and their role in SMEs performance. Furthermore, the review relates IC to SMEs and does not cover the role of IC in large corporations.

The originality of this paper lies in its contribution to the body of knowledge in the field of IC and SMEs by exploring IC's impact on SME performance, especially the market performance, knowledge management (KM), strategic business models, sustainability performance (corporate social responsibility [CSR]), innovation and their intercollaborations (varied stakeholders).

The three objectives served by this review are to provide readers a limpid insight about the topic performance management (PM), to analyse the latest trends in PM literature and to illustrate the theoretical perspectives. It would be fascinating for the practitioners and researchers to see the latest trends in the PM system, which is not yet covered in previous reviews. The study covers the historical and theoretical perspectives of human resource management practices. We also try to unveil some of the theoretical debates and conflicts regarding the topic.

We reviewed 139 studies on PM published within the last 20 years (2000–2020). The method used here is the integrative review method. The criteria used to determine studies are articles from peer-reviewed journals regarding the PM system published between 2000 and 2020. The initial search for studies was conducted using an extensive journal database, and then an intensive reference-based search was also done. Each selected article was coded, themes were identified, and trends for every 5 years were determined. All the articles were analysed and classified based on the methodology used to identify qualitative and quantitative studies.

The review concludes that PM literature's emphasis shifted from traditional historical evaluations conducted once or twice a year to forward-looking, feedback-enriched PM systems. By segregating the studies into 5-year periods, we could extract five significant trends that prevailed in the PM literature from 2000 to 2020: reactions to PM system, factors that influence PM system, quality of rating sources, evaluating the PM system and types of the PM system. The review ends with a discussion of practical implications and avenues for future research.

It is equally a limitation and strength of this paper that we conducted a review of 139 articles to cover the whole works in PM literature during the last 20 years. The study could not concentrate on any specific PM theme, such as exploring employee outcomes or organizational outcomes. Likewise, the studies on public sector and non-profit organizations are excluded from this review, which constitutes a significant share of PM literature. Another significant limitation is that the selected articles are classified only based on their methodology; further classification based on different themes and contexts can also be done.

The study is an original review of the PM literature to identify the latest trends in the field.