Talent Management: Working lines and key processes

Abstract

Purpose: Talent management represents today a challenge for companies, since the contribution of value comes increasingly from the area of intangible capital. The current paradigm of expanding technology and competitive dynamics, makes talent management that companies realize a critical success factor in today's markets. However, there is no generally accepted theoretical framework and empirical studies sufficient to demonstrate the role of talent management in creating competitive advantage. Therefore, the first objective of this paper is to analyze the evolution of talent management, to understand more deeply their fundamental dimensions: people and key positions in the organization. From these dimensions, as a second objective of the research is proposed to classify and characterize the literature about four alternative ways of study, according to the treatment they receive such dimensions and thus improve understanding of the role of talent management in business strategy

Design/methodology: To develop this paper we have selected the major contributions to the field of talent management, with particular emphasis on certain meta-analysis very quoted by the scientific community (Lewis and Heckman, 2006; Mellahi and Collings, 2009; Tarique and Schuler, 2010). In addition we have select additional papers published in high impact journals seen in ABI/Inform, Science Direct, SCOPUS, and EBSCO (Business Source Complete), through the keywords "Gestion del talento", "Plan de Gestion del Talento" and "Modelo de Gestion de Talento" and its English equivalent "Talent Management ", "Talent Management Plans/Systems" and "Talent Management Framework/Model ".

Findings: From this review, we extracted the existence of different ways of understanding and talent management apply in organizations and even different understandings of what is talent itself. For this, we describe the basic dimensions of talent management (people and key positions) and four alternative ways are established talent management as the treatment of these dimensions. Furthermore, we conclude that any talent plan includes processes or phases: attraction, selection, identification, development and retention.

Value: Unlike other proposals, we consider it necessary to incorporate an additional referral study around key positions in the organization. Thus, characterization and cataloging of the previous literature is provided, as well as comparative analysis of heterogeneous definitions of talent and talent management. Furthermore, we propose that talent management is not just a tool for the implementation of the strategy, but it is situate since the start of the strategic process, that is, from strategic formulation. Thus, we focus on the approach advocated from the third line of study.