Theories Of Talent And Talent Management

Executive Summary

This report aims to evaluate cross-cultural perspectives in relation to understanding talent and talent management, and to explore approaches to managing talent. The introduction makes clear that the actual market place is characterized by a great amount of multinationals and by being knowledge-based rather than commodity-based. The second part accesses this further, discussing the meaning of culture and how it influences the way we understand talent and therefore practice TM. A study is used in order to clarify the different mindsets of Anglo, Eastern European, Germanic, Latin American and Latin European clusters on the topic. Actual examples of companies are used in order to clarify how talent management practices

Based on the latter, these were the results (see Appendix 2 for quantitative outcomes):

Fixed vs. growth mindset about talent. No significant differences between cultures. The average shows that respondents have a mixed between fixed and growth mindset, leaning more towards the fixed one.

Talent is innate. There were no significant differences between cultures’ perspectives on this matter. Respondents from all cultural clusters indicated that talent could be developed for over 50% on average.

Everyone has talent. Anglo and Germanic believed on that to a significant higher extent than Latin Americans and Latin Europeans. Eastern Europeans were “somewhere in the middle”.

Exclusiveness of an organization’s talent management approach. Lower in Germanic countries than in the others, showing a contrast in relation to the qualitative data - Germanics wrote down talent associations with “excellence” and “exceptional performance”. The authors find explanations in two hypothesis: first, that the cluster engage more in “topgrading” – hiring only the very best for every single job, which makes talent available throughout the whole company; and second, that they may have more multidimensional conceptions of talent, which increases the view that “everyone is talented at

However, it is difficult to have a pattern in managing talent across subsidiaries of a multinational company. This is proved in a study by Burbach and Royle (2010), in which the aim was to analyze the factors influencing the transmission and use of talent management practices across a German and Irish subsidiaries of a US corporation. According to Martin and Beaumont (1999), US multinationals seem to rely heavily on centralized decision making. This is supported by the findings of the study, which make clear that the subsidiaries manage talent differed significantly due to host country effects like micro-political relationships between headquarter and each subsidiary. Another reason is the cultural difference between the subsidiaries. Not only the mindsets vary according to the culture, but also the implementation of computerized HR systems. The lack of consistency reflects on TM processes, which can be underutilized, undersubscribed or