Talent Management in Practice: An Integrated and Dynamic Approach(Emerald Points)

Talent Management (TM) is an issue of critical importance for today’s senior managers. Employers acknowledge that an engaged, skilled and motivated workforce is key to achieving growth and competitive advantage. Organizations are hiring TM officers and implementing TM strategies and programs to attract and retain the best employees. Yet many organizations still find it difficult to develop a coherent and successful TM approach. Academic research does not give much support in finding the right solutions: despite the enormous expansion of research on the topic, ambiguity about definitions and conceptual boundaries remains. Moreover, there is little knowledge about the nature of TM in practice and how it evolves over time. 
Talent Management in Practice offers an integrated and contextualized framework that addresses both the nature of TM in organizations and its ever-changing dynamics. The approach is based, on the one hand, upon lessons learned from previous empirical research on TM, and on the other hand, upon established theoretical frameworks from related academic fields. The result is a unique bridge between theory and TM in practice. 
This volume develops a model that can guide TM researchers in their future research, and since it is presented in an accessible and jargon-free format, it provides a touchstone for managers and practitioners as they implement and improve their TM approaches.

Table of Contents:
1. Introduction 2. Mapping the field: General description of the nature of empirical TM research  3. Mapping the field II: An overview of main topics studied in TM empirical research  4. Expanding the view towards an integrated approach  5. Understanding the dynamics in TM: from a static to a dynamic view  6. The integrated and dynamic TM model

About the Author :
Dr. Marian Thunnissen works as a Professor at the School of HRM and Applied Psychology of Fontys University of Applied Sciences in Eindhoven (The Netherlands). She has over twenty years of experience in research, consulting and teaching. Her current research is focused on the identification, attraction and development of talent, particularly in the public sector. Her recent interests concern a ‘teambased’ TM approach, the role of the line manager in TM, and the dilemmas and tensions organizations in practice experience in developing and implementing TM. She finds it very important to share her research and knowledge with organizations and HR practitioners in order to support them in an evidence-based TM approach. Dr. Eva Gallardo-Gallardo holds a PhD and MSc in Management from the Universitat de Barcelona. She works as Assistant Professor at the Department of Management of the School of Industrial Engineering of Barcelona at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya-BarcelonaTech. She possesses more than fourteen years of teaching experience in different national and international universities in the field of management. Her research focuses on talent management, with a particular interest in understanding the formation and evolution of the field, its dynamics, and its conceptual boundaries. She is a member of the Editorial Boards of the International Journal of Human Resource Management and of the Journal of Organisational Effectiveness: People and Performance.

Review :
Aiming to bridge theory and practice, the authors outline an integrated and contextualized framework that addresses the nature and complexity of talent management in organizations and its dynamics. They provide a talent management model based on lessons from previous academic empirical research and established theoretical frameworks from related fields. They discuss the empirical literature up to 2016, including the dominant topics studied (mainly practices, conceptualization, understanding talent, and global talent management) and the conceptualization of talent and talent management, then present a model that draws on strategic management, organizational theory, and strategic human resources management to characterize the nature and scope of the talent management approach in an organization. They also address the dynamics in managing talent, causes, and how organizations can deal with them, as well as the strengths and limitations of their model.