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This chapter presents a holistic view of dynamic external macro environments and their impact on internal organizational strategies. It suggests how events, and particularly major crises at the global or national level, affect organizational responses. Specifically, the authors submit that organizations adapt their strategy in line with the pressures they face from the external environment. Consequently, the day-to-day operations inside the organization change, and managers find themselves faced with new challenges in terms of how they manage their talent. By exploring critical roles that human resource (HR) professionals can play in talent management, the authors delineate several ways in which the HR department can help organizations to react to these external pressures, supporting managers in ensuring that employee behavior and values are aligned with the new organizational strategy. The objective of this chapter is not only to reflect on the HR professionals and their role in helping to manage organizational talent, as their organizations navigate the dynamic macro context, but also to stimulate further research in this field.

This paper sets out to explore the value of HR in times of change, providing an overview of current organizational change issues and against this backdrop exploring perceptions and requirements of the HR function. It also seeks to look at the important role that HR can play in taking the lead in talent management activities that can help to secure future organizational sustainability.

Data were collected through Roffey Park's annual The Management Agenda survey, which encompasses a sample of 500 UK managers across a wide range of sectors, organizational sizes and national/international structures. Further organizational data was collected for two case studies; the latter case study on talent management was taken from The Talent Management Journey.

The paper offers a number of practical recommendations for HR professionals. These include that HR needs to be flexible to both changing business and people requirements; focus attention on customer needs and delivering value; and work in partnership with various stakeholders to ensure successful talent management processes.

The paper is based on original Roffey Park research, both The Management Agenda survey, now in its 11th year, and Roffey Park's The Talent Management Journey research guide. It translates the research findings into practical implications for HR professionals and organizations in times of change.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the broad debate regarding universalistic and contingency perspectives of human resource management (HRM). Design/methodology/approach – Building on recent evidence of HRM differentiation within organisations, the present article studies variation in experienced HR practices across job level and whether the impact of HR practices on commitment, intention to quit and well‐being across job level is best explained by universalistic or contingency claims. Findings – Both studies found that employees in higher job levels report a greater number of HR practices. Findings further indicated that the associations between HR practices and the three outcomes were largely invariant across job level, thus supporting universalistic notions of HRM across job levels. Research limitations/implications – Data from both studies were cross‐sectional and single‐source, thus limiting causal inferences. More generally, there is a need to better understand HR differentiation within organisations and whether it offers an effective HR strategy. Originality/value – Few studies have examined systematic variation in HR practices across employee groups and universalistic/contingency arguments within organisations. The studies presented are among the first to offer an evaluative as well as descriptive analysis of the issues under investigation.

Two simultaneous trends have arisen in the field of HRM: the development of the human resource (HR) function toward a more strategic, value adding unit and the trend of HR outsourcing (HRO). Opinions are divided in the field of HRM research regarding the interdependences between these two trends and whether the HR function has a positive or negative effect. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to examine the triangular relationship among strategic HR integration, the HR-to-employee ratio and HRO.

This study analyses data from three large evaluations conducted in 14 European countries and compares the results obtained from the 2000, 2005 and 2010 Cranet survey waves. For the hypotheses, a multilevel regression design was used.

The results allow concluding that HRO supports the professionalization of the HR function in an effort to make it a strategic asset.

This study extends prior understandings of the theoretical perspective on HRO and its organizational impact. The sample is nested within 14 European countries and influenced by cultural aspects and institutional factors. These influences could be an exciting avenue for further research.

This paper includes important implications for HR practitioners. The results support a rather optimistic view of the HR function regarding its relationship with HRO and the latter’s impact on the HR-to-employee ratio and strategic HR integration.

The study answers the question: has HRO downsized internal HR staff over the past decade, and how is it related to the strategic integration of the HR function? In this context, this study analyses Cranet data to contribute to the discussion on the development of strategic HR integration and the impact of HRO on such efforts. Moreover, the study examines the influence of HRO on internal HR staff based on the theoretical framework of the resource-based view.

The purpose of this paper is to gain a systematic and comprehensive understanding of deploying temporary agency work (TAW) in China in relation to the adoption, staffing pattern, and human resource (HR) configuration.

Based on the literature and theory of strategic human resource management, this inquiry identifies and analyzes three major components in the utilization of temporary agency work (TAW) in Chinese organizations.

The paper derives a framework to conceptualize the relationships among strategic vs ad hoc adoption of TAW, separated and mixed staffing patterns, as well as four HR on the utilization of TAW in the Chinese context..

This is an initial effort in exploring the phenomenon of TAW in China prior to the enactment of Labor Contract Law. The paper offers a conceptual base for further examining the evolution of TAWs in Chinese organizations.

The context‐based analysis of TAW's challenges existing frameworks in the Western literature. The resulting framework is an innovative effort for a comprehensive understanding of TAW in China, thus enriches the existing literature.

This article starts with describing what the surplus value of modeling is for the processes of selection, implementation and optimization of human resource (HR) systems in terms of money, time and quality. The second part explains the architecture of the HR model. Eight components are defined: organization; human resource logistics; compensation and benefits; employability management; relations; health, safety and environment; information strategies; and employee administration. Within these components all generic HR processes are defined by means of best practices.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the perceptions of strategic actors in multinational organisations and to contribute to our understanding of how multinational companies articulate and define talent management and how – or what – they perceive its value to be.

The paper is based on an empirical research study in which data were collected through 50 in-depth interviews across five multinational companies, conducted at a regional level across ten countries. Participants in the study were strategic actors representing two groups of managers/leaders (HR and talent management system designers and business leaders who are directly involved in the implementation of talent management).

The absence of a formal talent management definition led to the emergence of different views and interpretations of what it is. It was viewed as a bundle, or set, of management ideologies manifested in all HR-related practices across four key areas: hiring the right talent, performance management, succession planning and development and retention. Performance management acted as the cornerstone. Talent management strategies displayed little participation for both system designers and implementers and distinct patterns of mystification, technologization and concretisation. The language of value was uncommonly used but provoked different ways of thinking about the role and meaning of talent management.

The strategic actors in the talent system continue to see talent management in narrow functional and HR process terms. However, by bundling these HR functions and processes together, it is evident that they can be encouraged to recast their activity in a broader strategic narrative. Borrowing the notions and theories of value and value creation, and investigating talent management through this lens, should help to surface interesting insights into how talent management might be defined in practice, and how the language of value may in future be used to understand what talent management really is.

The global study underpinning this paper attempts to deconstruct the understanding that strategic actors have about talent management from an empirical base. It contributes to the conceptual development of the talent management discourse by revealing the logics being pursued and address the definitional problem currently evidenced in the literature. It also provides direction for future research.

The dynamic environment has necessitated searching for new ways for managing and grooming people for better performance. The purpose of this study is to explore ambidexterity in human resource management (HRM) for better management of paradoxical tensions and its effect on employee performance. Further, this research also addresses the black box in this relationship by evaluating the extraneous (managers’ ambidextrous orientation) and mediating (individual ambidexterity) variables in this relationship.

A quantitative research methodology has been used to explore the ambidexterity in HRM and its impact on employee performance. Around 470 banks have been contacted for data collection. The data have been thoroughly examined for reliability and validity. Further, it has also been checked for common method variance.

The findings revealed that individual ambidexterity mediates the relationship between ambidextrous HRM and employee performance. Further, managers’ ambidextrous orientation moderates the relationship between ambidextrous HRM and individual ambidexterity.

The present study makes an important contribution to the strategic HRM literature in general. The theoretical and practical implications have also been put forth for academic and practical fields. Lastly, the study contributes towards ambidexterity literature by examining it from an HRM perspective.

The HR function is increasingly driven by effectiveness, efficiency and performance. This means taking a structured approach to HR operational excellence and applying business metrics and methodologies. Nicholas J. Higgins, dean of the International School of Human Capital Management, explains how the concept of Lean HR can bring clarity to the cost‐value relationship.

Talent is a critical factor for organizational success. Multinational corporations (MNCs) face the challenge of fierce competition for talent worldwide by increasing their efforts in global talent management (GTM). To improve the strategic alignment of GTM, organizations increasingly incorporate information and communication technology (ICT) applications to support their GTM system. However, not every organization is successful at applying these new opportunities (e-GTM) and aligning them successfully with their organizational strategy. This chapter aims at conceptualizing the relationship between strategic GTM and strategic ICT in an aligned effort. It presents a conceptual framework that identifies four types of MNC approaches to e-GTM.

By means of a review of, both the GTM literature as well as the ICT literature, we connect the two concepts, GTM and ICT into e-GTM, into a framework along two axes: the extent to which MNCs apply GTM (ad hoc vs. strategic) and the scope of ICT in MNCs (operational vs. strategic).

Although the framework identifies four approaches to e-GTM in MNCs, the framework is less black and white than as presented. Companies can display e-GTM characteristics which place them in the gray areas in between each of the profiles. Additionally, we assume that achieving the alignment of strategic GTM and strategic ICT is an iterative process.

Since strategic alignment is not static but continuously changing, it requires companies to reevaluate their current GTM practices and ICT applications constantly while scanning the external market for new developments in the field of GTM and ICT to ensure the innovative state of their system. Furthermore, we assume that MNCs from high-tech sectors are more successful in supporting their strategic GTM applications with suitable ICT applications than MNCs from low-tech sectors. The study presents a first step toward researching the relationship between strategic GTM and strategic ICT in MNCs. The proposed framework might be used as a foundation for further research studies.

The framework presented in this chapter can help MNCs to address the issue of connecting GTM and ICT.

The relationship between GTM and ICT have not been conceptualized before. Furthermore, the typology presented in this chapter, with four approaches to ICT-enabled GTM, is a new way of looking at the GTM–ICT relationship.