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Despite a large literature on talent management there is very little research on the comparative attitudes of employees in talent pools with those not in talent pools. This is an important omission as employee reactions should influence how effective talent programmes are and how they can be designed and evaluated. Consequently, the purpose of this paper is to explore the work-related attitudes of employees who are members and non-members of talent pools.

Matched samples of employees working in a single public sector, scientific organization were surveyed using a standard survey and open questioning to elicit and compare the voices of included and excluded employees.

Employees in talent pools were more positive about their future prospects than employees outside talent pools who reported feelings of lower support from the organization, stronger feelings of unfairness and had lower expectations of the organization’s interest in them.

More matched-sample studies are necessary to further understand how employee reactions to talent pool membership are mediated by context.

Organizations should consider how employees will react to the design and implementation of talent pools and try to alleviate any adverse reactions. Two threats in particular are the depression of affect among excluded employees and failure to sustain positive affect among the included employees.

This is one of very few studies to explore employee reactions to talent programmes in a single organization. The single-site design controls for a large number of variables that confound inter-organizational studies of talent pool membership.

Purpose: We generally ascribe hospitality industry talent shortages to organisations competing for dwindling talent rather than their inability to sustain industry talent pools. This chapter suggests that developing sustainable talent management and development (STMD) initiatives can address the talent attraction and retention issues the industry is facing. Following Ostrom’s (2002) design principles, we advocate for sustainable common pool resource networks as a solution for developing durable STMD initiatives to address talent shortages within the hospitality industry.

Methodology: A conceptual chapter synthesising disparate theories in a new context.

Findings: Despite hospitality organisations’ continued investment in talent management, talent shortages remain systematically embedded within the industry. These are the result of a perennial competition among hospitality firms for talent, when, instead, these firms should engage in collective efforts to sustain industry talent pools. The adoption of a more sustainable approach by incorporating Ostrom’s (2002) design principles to establish long-lasting common talent pool resource in the form of industry rather than firm-level talent pools may halt the decline in available talent.

Research Limitation/Implications: While hospitality organisations have a vested interest in sustainably managing talent, limited attention has been paid to creating sustainable industry talent pools. We propose several design principles for developing durable STMD initiatives, which require empirical testing.

Practical/Social Implications: We address talent shortages for hospitality organisations by offering the blueprint for developing sustainable industry talent pools for a collection of firms, which, on their own, would lack the experience and resources to securing a steady supply of talent. In addition, industry talent pools also have the potential to improve the general working conditions for employees in this industry pool.

Originality/Value of Chapter: This chapter addresses hospitality industry talent shortages by proposing the creation of sustainable regional industry talent pools rather than focussing on firm-level talent management practices.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the potential implications of selecting and developing discrete pools of talent within organizations and to answer the question “If talent is singled out as a separate group of high‐potential individuals in organizations, what measures could be put in place to help ensure their effectiveness?”

The paper reviews the literature on talent pools and examines existing case study research, drawing on an analysis of over 50 companies. This analysis was used to draw out aspects which impact the effectiveness of talent pools at particular points in time; from the initial establishment of pool members through to the ongoing maintenance of an established talent pool.

Findings indicate that during the establishment phase, ensuring appropriate segmentation of the pool and limiting bias in the nomination process were particularly significant. The ongoing maintenance of a successful talent pool was also found to be a challenge from both an organizational and an individual perspective. Specific factors that were identified were dealing with changing business needs; changing individual circumstances; providing development opportunities; maintaining senior commitment; and defining success measures.

The research identifies a number of critical factors that practitioners may need to address in the process of establishing and maintaining talent pools, such as pool segmentation, work‐life balance and the impact on the psychological contract.

The ongoing maintenance of talent pools is rarely discussed in the literature and the recommendations for practice will be relevant for all human resource and organizational development practitioners.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the experiences of employees excluded from a talent pool and to identify what career development is provided for them.

A qualitative approach was adopted, and narrative inquiry was selected as the optimum route to obtaining detailed and rich accounts of the experiences of employees excluded from a talent pool. Fifteen in-depth interviews were conducted with eight employees and seven managers in a small hotel chain in the south of England.

The study shows that employees who are excluded from a talent pool feel frustration, mistrust in the organisation, have low expectations of career development and show an intention to leave the organisation.

The study was conducted in a chain of hotels where talent management (TM) strategies are one of the key priorities in the organisation. The results may be different in hotels where TM strategies are less formal and talent pool segmentation is not clearly identified.

Hotel managers should consider employees who are excluded from a talent pool and build effective TM strategies and provide career development to minimise adverse reactions and improve commitment and motivation.

This research contributes to understanding talent pool exclusion and its consequences for the hotel sector. Narrative interviewing is used in this context for the first time.

This research stems from the need by organisations to retain their key talent in the context of the change in the psychological contract manifested from the emergence of boundaryless careers. Many organisations have segmented their workforce to develop talent pools of high potential employees to meet the organisation’s current and future critical skills needs. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of inclusion or exclusion in the talent pool on the psychological contract.

The study presents findings from 195 employees from three different organisations, about 50 per cent of whom were in talent pools. Various instruments in the literature were used to measure the psychological contract and the other constructs of organisational citizenship behaviour, trust and turnover intention of employees in the talent pools in comparison to those not in talent pools.

The study shows that being part of the talent pool has a positive impact on the relational psychological contract and organisational commitment but does not necessarily translate into trust and the intention to stay with organisations.

The study was conducted in three large firms with well-developed and entrenched talent management strategies. The results may be different in firms with less formal talent management strategies or those firms that do not use talent pools. Despite these limitations, the study is valuable in showing the differences in relationships between employees recognised as more important and those not recognised in the same way.

Talent strategy should not ignore employees not in talent pools as they have shown that they display an aspiration to build long-term relationships with their employers and could represent a future source of potential. It is recommended that organisations should continue to segment their workforce to determine who should form part of the talent pool.

The results indicate the high complexity in understanding contemporary employment relationships and could be closely related to the previous findings on trust. Despite being identified as potential employees for development into linchpin and pivotal positions in their organisation, these employees were no different to employees not in talent pools when it came to trust and the intention to leave their organisation.

Employees in talent pools and those not in talent pools were similar in their intention to leave their organisations in circumstances where their expectations were not met. This finding is contrary to the expectation and indicates that relational psychological contracts do not have a moderating impact on the intention to leave where expectations are not met.

Based on the tasks and responsibilities of global leaders, the benefits of a holistic view in global leadership talent acquisition are identified. The main areas of this integrating process, such as succession planning, attracting, and mobilizing talents, selection, training and development, and retaining global leadership talents, are described. The success factors and principles of a global talent acquisition process are presented and explained. Furthermore, this chapter shows that a proactive step for global organizations is to build an in-house global leadership talent pool to ensure having the right global leaders in the right places at the right time.

This paper aims to unpack how small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) can operationalise coopetition in talent management, addressing ongoing talent shortages in the hospitality industry which were intensified during the Covid-19 pandemic.

This conceptual paper draws from literature on coopetition and talent management in SMEs. Specifically, the authors take an interorganisational talent pool lens and develop a framework following the principles of open-systems theory.

The authors find that the traditional use of talent pools is often impractical for SMEs because of a lack of resources and capabilities. Instead, interorganisational talent pools, through coopetition in talent management, can aid these firms to address talent shortages. The authors identify potential for SME coopetition at various stages, including attraction, development and retention of talent.

Coopetition in talent management can aid industries in establishing market-thickening pipelines. Through co-attracting, co-developing and co-retaining talent, SMEs can create interorganisational talent pools. To develop talent management coopetition, a set of prerequisites, catalysts and potential inhibitors must be analysed and managed.

This paper moves the talent management debate beyond competition for talent, introducing coopetition as a viable alternative. Taking an open-systems perspective, the authors develop an integrative framework for coopetition in talent management in SMEs encompassing input, process and output components. The authors reveal the dynamic and complex nature of this coopetition process, highlighting the essential role of coopetition context and illustrating open-system principles.

Senior line managers and their HR business partners need to make sure they have the right leadership talent, at the right time, in the right place. Our aim in this chapter is to weave together some of the best conceptual models and most useful research findings we have found to create a guiding framework for managing global leadership talent strategically. The guiding framework addresses three primary phases of global talent planning and development: clarifying the globalization strategy, defining global leadership roles and requirements, and designing the talent management system.

Despite many neurodiverse individuals possessing skills that are desperately needed, few organizations have redesigned their attraction, development and retention practices to capture them. In this chapter, we alert organizations that embracing neurodiversity bodes well for expanding the diversity of the talent pool, thereby mitigating talent risks. We proceed to analyse and explain how neurodiversity can be positioned within the talent management literature and identify opportunities for integrating neurodiversity and talent management research. We begin by exploring the concept of neurodiversity and in particular neurodiversity in the workplace. We then use this foundation to establish how neurodiversity can be engaged within the talent management literature. Finally, we outline a plethora of future research questions and avenues to further explore neurodiversity in the context of talent management.