Journal of World Business 45 (2010) 105108
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Introduction
Global talent management
1. Introduction
The topic of talent management has gained mainstream
acceptance in the practitioner community as a key management
activity in recent years. This was prompted by research, in the late
1990s, by a group of McKinsey consultants who coined the phrase
the war for talent to reect the central importance of employees
to the success of top performing companies (for a summary see
Michaels, Haneld-Jones, & Axelrod, 2001). Although the global
aspect of talent management may not have received explicit
emphasis in the consultants early work (neither multinational,
global, nor international appear in the index to the Michaels et al.,
2001 text), the vast majority of companies on which their research
was based all had some degree of international operation.
The interest in talent management has not abated in the past
decade. A recent report highlighted that seven in ten corporate
leaders spend in excess of 20% of their time on talent management
activities (Economist Intelligence Unit, 2006). It seems that Chief
Executive Ofcers (CEOs) are increasingly realizing that talent
management is so important that it cannot be left to the HR
function alone (Economist Intelligence Unit, 2006). The Boston
Consulting Group (2007) found that, although viewed as being of
critical importance, talent management was one of the areas in
which rms were least procient. Even more recently, a review by
Beechler and Woodward (2009) concluded that notwithstanding
the current economic climate talent remains a critical agenda
item for key organizational decision makers.
While practitioners interest in the topic of talent management
has been gaining momentum, academic research on the same topic
has been developing at a slower rate. This special issue is intended to
contribute to the emerging academic literature on global talent
management and to advance the conceptual and empirical
grounding of this emerging area of interest. We begin by considering
some of the debates around the conceptual and intellectual
boundaries of global talent management. We then consider the
factors which have contributed to the increasing interest in global
talent management. Finally we conclude by outlining the contribu-
tions to this special issue of Journal of World Business.
2. The conceptual and intellectual boundaries of global talent
management
One of the key challenges which talent management has
experienced in establishing its academic merits over the past
The editors are grateful of all of those who submitted their work to this special
issue. Additionally we are extremely grateful to the special issues reviewers who
contributed greatly to the development of the papers published in this special issue.
1090-9516/$ see front matter . Crown Copyright 2009 Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.jwb.2009.09.011
decade has been the unresolved issue around its denition and
intellectual boundaries. As Lewis and Heckman (2006, p. 139)
conclude there is a disturbing lack of clarity regarding the
denition, scope and overall goals of talent management. In this
regard, Lewis and Heckman identify three key streams of thinking
with regard to what talent management is. The authors aligned
with the rst stream appear to be merely substituting the label
talent management for human resource management, often
limiting their focus to particular HR practices such as recruitment,
leadership development, succession planning and the like. A
second stream emphasizes the development of talent pools
focusing on projecting employee/stafng needs and managing
the progression of employees through positions (Lewis & Heck-
man, 2006, p. 140) typically building upon earlier research in the
manpower planning or succession planning literatures. The third
stream focuses on the management of talented people. This
literature argues that all roles within the organisation should be
lled with A performers, referred to as topgrading (Smart,
1999) and emphasises the management of C players, or
consistently poor performers, out of the organisation (Michaels
et al., 2001). Collings and Mellahi (2009) identify a further stream.
This stream emphasizes the identication of key positions which
have the potential to differentially impact the competitive
advantage of the rm (Boudreau & Ramstad, 2007; Huselid,
Beatty, & Becker, 2005).
The wide variation in how talent management is dened raises
two key challenges which apply equally to global talent manage-
ment. The rst challenge is that scholars in this area need to gain
clarity and build consensus regarding the meaning of global talent
management from practical, conceptual, and theoretical perspec-
tives. The second key challenge is that global talent management
needs to differentiate itself from international human resource
management. That is not to say that global talent management
cannot draw upon international human resource management (see
for example Tarique & Schuler, 2009), but it must differentiate
itself from international human resource management to have
merit in being studied in its own right.
Global talent management (GTM) has been dened in broad
terms as an organizations efforts to attract, select, develop and
retain key talented employees on a global scale (Stahl et al., 2007).
A key aspect of this denition is the focus on a key group of core
employees, rather than the multinationals entire human capital
pool (see also Becker, Huselid, & Beatty, 2009; Boudreau &
Ramstad, 2007; Collings & Mellahi, 2009). This denition
emphasizes an international focus and highlights the role of
multinational enterprises internal systems in ensuring key
strategic employees are attracted, retained and deployed to best
meet the organizations strategic priorities. However, as noted
previously, a separate stream of literature emphasizes (Boudreau &
106 Introduction / Journal of World Business 45 (2010) 105108
Ramstad, 2007; Huselid et al., 2005) the importance of the
positions which these talented individual employees ll in the
context of talent management systems and argues that this should
be the point of departure for talent management systems. Finally
in the global context there is also scope for comparative studies
which consider how talent management systems operate in
different national contexts. For example, Doh et al. (2009) explore
talent management in the Indian context, while Iles et al. (2009)
contribution considers the Chinese context and McDonnell et al.
(2009) consider the Irish context. Thus, the collective denition we
propose for global talent management is as follows:
Global talent management includes all organizational activ-
ities for the purpose of attracting, selecting, developing, and
retaining the best employees in the most strategic roles
(those roles necessary to achieve organizational strategic
priorities) on a global scale. Global talent management takes
into account the differences in both organizations global
strategic priorities as well as the differences across national
contexts for how talent should be managed in the countries
where they operate.
Our hope is that the denition we offer is a starting point upon
which the research community can use to shape, build, and
strengthen knowledge in the area of global talent management.
We now consider the factors which over the last decade have
driven the emergence of global talent management as a key
strategic issue for managers and scholars alike.
3. Factors inuencing the emergence of global talent
management
Global talent management is a relatively new multi-
disciplinary eld of enquiry which has emerged in recent years
as a key strategic issue for multinational corporations (MNCs)
for several reasons. First, there is a growing recognition of the
critical role played by globally competent managerial talent in
ensuring the success of MNCs reecting the intensication of
global competition and the greater need for international
learning and innovation in MNCs (Bartlett & Ghoshal, 1989).
Second, competition between employers for talent has shifted
from the country level to the regional and global levels
(Sparrow, Brewster, & Harris, 2004). There is a growing
recognition that MNCs need to manage talent on a global basis
to remain competitive and that talent may be located in
different parts of their global operations (Ready & Conger, 2007).
MNCs are facing growing difculties in recruiting and retaining
the necessary managerial talent for their global operations and
increasingly MNCs compete for the same global talent pool
(Stahl et al., 2007). Third, shortages of managerial and
professional talent have emerged as the key HR challenge
facing the majority of MNCs (Bjorkman & Lervik, 2007; Scullion
& Starkey, 2000). Fourth, research highlights that shortages of
international management talent have been a signicant
constraint on the successful implementation of global strategies
(Cohn, Khurana, & Reeves, 2005; Scullion, 1994) and shortages
of leadership talent in particular were identied as a major
obstacle many companies face as they seek to operate
successfully on a global scale (Sparrow et al., 2004; Stahl
et al., 2007). Finally, the growth of the emerging markets has
resulted in a further demand for a distinctive type of managerial
talent which can operate effectively in these culturally complex
and geographically distant markets (Scullion, Collings, &
Gunnigle, 2007).
On balance, this suggests that, while the rhetoric of maximizing
the talent of individual employees as a unique source of
competitive advantage for MNCs has been central to the discourse
surrounding strategic HRM in recent years, the extent to which
organizations effectively manage their human talent especially
on a global scale often fails to live up to this hype (Cohn et al.,
2005; Scullion & Collings, 2006). Research has suggested that
MNCs are frequently unable to identify who their most talented
employees are and where they are located around the world
(Collings, Scullion & Morley, 2007). Global talent management is
critical because it is impossible for rms to leverage an asset they
do not realize they have.
To bring us closer to the goal of better understanding and
hopefully improving global talent management, this special issue
brings together a number of papers by leading researchers on
different aspects of global talent management from different
cultural contexts around the world. New empirical and theoretical
insights into global talent management are explored in the
different contexts of Europe, Asia and North America. The
emerging markets of India and China are given particular attention
due to their strategic importance, the distinctive cultures affecting
talent management in those countries and the dearth of research
about them.
A common theme of the papers in the special issue is the
recognition that global talent management has emerged as a
critical element of strategic human resource management in the
multinational enterprise (Scullion & Collings, 2010). The con-
tributions in this special issue, which examine both strategic and
operational aspects of talent management seeks to provide a
comprehensive overview of the area. The special issue also
highlights emerging topics which will shape the area of global
talent management research over the next decade and seeks to
provide a platform for researchers to develop our theoretical and
empirical understanding and knowledge of global talent manage-
ment in the future. Rather than representing a comprehensive and
dening contribution to the literature on global talent manage-
ment, we view the papers in this special issue as contributing to
the emerging conceptual and empirical foundations of this
increasingly important area of study. A key challenge for the
special issue, however, is to locate the current discussion and
debate about global talent management within the wider context
of the current economic crises and a key aim for the special issue is
to contribute to a more informed and critical research agenda in
global talent management in the context of the current global
economic crises.
We now briey introduce the papers which make up the special
issue:
4. Contributions to the special issue
The paper by Doh, Stumpf and Tymon examines the challenges of
talent management of knowledge workers in India, one of the largest
and fastest growing emerging economies in the world where
economic activity has considerably outpaced the availability of
skilled employees. The authors develop and test a model of talent
management with data from 28 Indian companies and almost 5000
professional staff. The paper highlights the importance of intrinsic
rewards as a key element of the talent management system in the
Indian context. The authors suggest that employers should more
closely examine non-pecuniary mechanisms to encourage
employee retention and employee satisfaction, particularly in
challenging labour market environments.
Our second paper by Tarique and Schuler provides a compre-
hensive review of the research in global talent management and
seeks to better organize the literature through creating a frame-
work for understanding and advancing further research in the area.
The framework highlights some critical challenges in global talent
management and the drivers of those challenges. The paper helps
 Introduction / Journal of World Business 45 (2010) 105108
guide the future research agenda in this eld and also seeks to
inform the work of senior HR professionals who are engaging with
talent management issues in the global context.
Our third paper by Makela, Bjorkman and Ehrnrooth seeks to
address the fundamental question of who is considered a talent
and why and develops our understanding of the decision
processes involved in the identication and evaluation of internal
talent in the MNC. A framework is developed by the authors which
suggests that talent pool inclusion is a two-stage decision process
involving both experience based and cognition based managerial
decisionmaking. They use an in depth case study of a Finnish
MNE to highlight that talent pool inclusion is determined by a
wider range of variables than that suggested by the existing
literature.
The fourth paper by Mellahi and Collings adds to our under-
standing both of the underlying causes of talent management
failure in multinational enterprises and the barriers to effective
global talent management. Their paper contributes to theoretical
development in this area, using insights from both agency theory
and bounded rationality theory to explain the failure of global
talent management systems to effectively promote talent from
across the corporate network.
Next, McDonnell, Lamare, Gunnigle and Lavelle seek to redress
the empirical decit in the study of GTM through an empirical
study using empirical data from 260 MNEs in Ireland. Their study
highlights that many MNEs continue to adopt an ad hoc rather than
a strategic approach to the management of their high potential
staff and that integrated approaches to talent management are far
from universal. One unexpected nding was that MNCs operating
in low tech/low cost sectors are more likely to have formal global
talent management systems.
In their contribution, Farndale, Scullion and Sparrow consider
the role of the corporate human resource function in multinational
corporations in global talent management. They consider global
talent management from two perspectives: increasing global
competition for talent, and new forms of international mobility.
The rst considers the mechanisms of GTM, and the second,
individual willingness to be mobile, especially in emerging
markets, and the organizational capability needed to manage this
talent. New corporate HR roles are identied which show how
these issues might be addressed and the major future challenges
facing corporate HR are considered.
The contribution by Feisel, Hartmann and Schober use
qualitative data to examine the extent to which Western MNCs
transfer their talent management strategies to China and adapt
them to local requirements. The study highlights that, despite
the importance of key cultural considerations in the Chinese
context, trends in recent years have moved towards a harmo-
nisation between international standards and host country
culture.
The paper by Iles, Chuai and Teece examines the relationship
between talent management practices and HRM through an
empirical study of MNCs in consultancies in Beijing. The paper
contributes to our understanding of what drives rms to adopt
talent management practices in this context and to our knowledge
of the HRM practices required to effectively support talent
management initiatives in different contexts.
Finally, the paper by Li and Scullion examines the issue of
developing expatriate managers local competence in emerging
markets from a knowledge-based perspective. The paper argues
that local knowledge in emerging markets differs signicantly
from corporate knowledge transferred to those markets and that
this has implications for the implementation of talent manage-
ment strategies at local level. The paper highlights the need for
further research to bridge the link between talent management
and knowledge management.
107
List of reviewers for the special issue
Jyotsna Bhatnagar, Management Development Institute, India.
Chris Brewster, University of Reading, UK.
Saba Colakoglu, Rutgers University, USA.
Fang Lee Cooke, University of Manchester, UK.
Peter Dowling, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.
Jos Gamble, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK.
Keith Goodall, University of Cambridge, UK.
Michelle Harrison, University of Limerick, Ireland.
Tina Starr, University of Nottingham, UK.
Kate Hutchings, Monash University, Australia
Shenxue Li, University of Strathclyde, UK.
Kristiina Makela, Hanken School of Economics, Finland.
Anthony McDonnell, Newcastle University, Australia.
Kamel Mellahi, University of Shefeld, UK.
Joyce Osland, San Jose State University, USA.
Markus Pudelko, University of Edinburgh, UK.
Sebastien Reiche, IESE Barcelona, Spain.
Margaret Schaffer, University of Wisconsin Milwaukie, USA.
Adam Smale, Univeristy of Vaasa, Finland.
Vesa Suutari, Univeristy of Vaasa, Finland.
Mohan Thite, Grifth University, Australia.
Arup Varma, Loyola University Chicago, USA.
Denice Welch, University of Melbourne, Australia.
Geoff Wood, University of Shefeld, UK.
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1
Hugh Scullion* Tel.: +353 91495385.
2
David G. Collings1 Tel.: +1 732 445 5228.
J.E. Cairnes School of Business & Economics,
NUI Galway, University Road, Galway, Ireland