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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.

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.

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.

This paper aims to investigate the importance of talent management (TM) as a fundamental component of management philosophy and practice to auger contemporary competitiveness in Chinese organisations, which have forged transformational synergies with traditional forms of political intervention and capital investment.

A pluralist design was used, in which the quantitative and qualitative assessment was adopted with Chinese decision-making executives of corporations operating in the global arena. By using managerial responses, this paper offered a more nuanced and grounded understanding of TM in general.

Although the results revealed that the concept of TM gained a significant footprint in the studied organisations, the influence of cultural nuances and organisational structural processes restrict the practice of TM, and, indeed, there is a need to have a Chinese characteristic.

This research underlies the importance of intensifying critical scrutiny of the relativity of TM, organisational practices and cultural heritage when developing future organisational leaders.

The instruments for assessing the phenomena of TM and related concepts encourage legitimacy to extend the limited empirical research with more industries across different geographical regions in China.

This paper addresses an under-researched area of world importance, namely, the critical role of TM, which is to optimise these scant resources in the worthy pursuit of economic and political stability in both the domestic and global contexts.

This paper aims to examine the technology usage for talent management and its effect on organizational performance.

The grounded theory approach was used for this research. Semi-structured interviews with 122 senior HR officers of national and multinational companies in India were conducted after extensive literature review. NVivo 8.0 software was used for the analysis of the interview data.

Technology usage for talent management contributes to talent analytics and strategic HR management (SHRM). It was found that talent analytics and SHRM lead to developing a high-performing talent pool, which in turn contributes to organizational performance.

This study used the grounded theory approach to develop the proposed conceptual model for organizational performance using talent management technology. This study delivers important insights for talent managers, HR technology marketers and developers of technology.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the role talent intermediaries can play in supporting the access and development of talent from forcibly displaced backgrounds.

The authors draw on a single case study design of UK charitable organisation, the Council for At-Risk Academics, to consider the global talent management of academics in exile.

This paper finds that specialised intermediaries can facilitate access to and the successful performance (individual and organisational) of refugee talent. Findings reveal a major shift in talent recruitment processes that are required in order for refugees to take up international work opportunities and highlight the importance of viewing individual potential, organisational support and opportunity access as a precursor for talent development and impact.

This paper shows that profession-specific intermediary support that fosters cross-sector partnerships, better addresses the talent development and workforce integration challenges of refugees.

Application of a multi-level relational framework shows the reasons for, and reality of forced displacement for academics in exile. Focusing on the academic sector demonstrates the importance of protecting both individuals and values at the heart of professions subject to persecution during war and unrest. In highlighting how refugee talent intermediaries can support individuals to breach the canvas ceiling and facilitate the global mobility of refugee talent, a contribution is made to existing debates in diversity, global talent management and migration studies.

Despite the proliferation of studies on talent management (TM), few studies focus on the perspectives of human resource management (HRM) representatives. Furthermore, there is a dearth of studies that explore talent philosophies and TM in practice in private organizations in emerging economies, such as those of the Arab Middle East (AME) region. Consequently, the purpose of this study is to explore talent philosophies and TM in practice in the country-specific context of Lebanon.

This study was exploratory in nature and followed a qualitative interpretive methodology. It capitalized on in-depth, semi-structured interviews with HRM representatives.

The findings of this study indicated relative consensus in talent philosophies across organizations in four industries; talent was largely perceived as exclusive, despite disagreements on whether it was stable or developable. Differences were identified in terms of how TM was understood in organizations and also how it was executed in practice in terms of talent identification and recruitment, training and development, performance assessment and talent retention.

This study is the first to empirically explore talent philosophies and TM in practice in the context of Lebanon. It is also among the few studies to extend the use of institutional theory (IT) to talent philosophies and TM practices. The originality of this study is also derived from its focus on the practices of HRM departments through using feedback from HRM representatives.

With talent management becoming an area of growing concern in the literature, this paper seeks to investigate talent management, employee engagement and talent pipeline development.

A case study of best practice in talent pipeline development is followed using interviews and archival data as shared by the organization.

The findings of the case looked at interventions of employee engagement and dialogue. Establishing talent pools and identification of talent through talent matrix is highlighted. A basic HR architecture is emphasized. Global managerial diversity with rotational assignments in different markets is another finding of the case which grooms future leaders for the organization.

The present study indicated that a good level of engagement may lead to high retention and grooming of future leaders for the organization.