Multiple lenses on talent management: definitions and contours of the field

Abstract

Introduction As noted in the previous chapter, there have been a number of different philosophies that have come to dominate the field of talent management. Collings and Mellahi (2009) helpfully outlined these different philosophies as follows. People approach: talent management as a categorization of people. Practices approach: talent management as the presence of key HRM practices. Position approach: talent management as the identification of pivotal positions. Strategic-pools approach: talent management as internal talent pools and succession planning. These are often presented as competing approaches to talent management, or definitions of it, alternative conceptualizations, and better or worse ways of doing it. In this chapter we: use this way of categorizing approaches to talent management to organize our discussion about the nature of strategic talent management build on the categorization by showing how each philosophy has come about and evolved, its essence, and some of the assumptions it is based on lay out the different assumptions they make about organizational effectiveness, how they have shaped mainstream thinking, and the different strategies they argue are necessary to achieve it provide a range of critiques of talent practice, notably the people philosophy put the four philosophies into a framework to help think about, and position, the design of different organizational talent-management systems and determine when each should become most dominant.

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