David G. Collings

Trinity College Dublin | TCD · School of Business

Despite a significant degree of academic and practitioner interest the topic of talent management remains underdeveloped. A key limitation is the fact that talent management lacks a consistent definition and clear conceptual boundaries. The specific contribution of the current paper is in developing a clear and concise definition of strategic talen...

The link between global talent management (GTM) and multinational enterprises’ (MNEs) performance has not been theorised or empirically tested. We develop a theoretical framework for how GTM links to performance at the headquarters (HQ), subsidiary, and individual employee levels. Using the resource-based view as a frame, we highlight the routines...

Temporal focus on past, present, and future of contributions to work is critical to understanding how employees and their line managers navigate career disruptions and minimize their potential for negative impact. This paper reframes temporal focus using a dyadic, relational perspective to explore how temporal focus (in-)congruence shapes resociali...

In recent decades, scholars’ and practitioners’ interest in star performers and high‐potential employees (HiPos) has increased dramatically. To date, however, researchers have considered these two classifications of exceptional talent in relative isolation of one another, despite the fact that they are widely considered to comprise organizations’ m...

There has a significant increase in the volume of research on the management of talent over recent decades; however, the question of what talent is remains under debate. How talent is understood and defined has significant implications for its management within organizations, yet these aspects are often overlooked in the extant literature. Through...

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a great “reset” and has challenged many assumptions about work and life in general. Our focus in this paper is on the future of global work in the context of multinational enterprises (MNEs). We take a phenomenon-based approach to describe the important trends and challenges affecting the where, who, how and why of...

This special issue aims to advance our understanding of talent management in emerging market economies. The uniqueness of this special issue was that it invited and accepted contributions on talent management in emerging countries at multiple levels. At the macro level, i.e. from a country level perspective, given the prevalence of state interventi...

The greatest competition among rivals in many industries is not for market share but human capital. In the so‐called talent war, organisations compete aggressively to attract star employees—individuals with disproportionate productivity and external visibility—in pursuit of competitive advantage. Building on human capital and resource‐based view th...

This chapter offers a commentary on the JIBS editorial titled “International HRM insights for navigating the COVID-19 pandemic: Implications for future research and practice” (Caligiuri, De Cieri, Minbaeva, Verbeke & Zimmermann, Journal of International Business Studies, 51, 697–713, 2020). Reflecting on Caligiuri et al.’s (Journal of International...

The Boeing 737-MAX was created for the ultra-competitive environment of the aviation industry and advertised as capable of delivering an 8% reduction in fuel and a 14% reduction in CO2 when compared to the Next-Generation 737, a substantial saving for airlines. This research sets out to establish the interactions of price volatility, information fl...

The impact of the coronavirus disease (COVID‐19) pandemic is unprecedented. At an organisational level, the crisis has been hugely disruptive, complex and fraught with ambiguity for leaders. The crisis is fundamentally a human one, making human resource (HR) leaders central in enabling organisations to manage through and ultimately exit the crisis...

An understanding of how emergent changes unfold is important for organizations in charting the path forward to address their underlying talent needs. Sourcing and retaining the quality and quantity of talent required to deliver on an organization’s strategic agenda, already a challenge before the pandemic, requires even more urgent strategic action...

How multinational enterprises staff their global operations has been a key question for researchers in international human resource management (IHRM) for a number of decades. It is widely recognised that getting staffing right on the global scale is key in enabling multinational enterprises (MNEs) to deliver on their strategic objectives. However t...

Career shocks have become an increasingly important part of current careers scholarship. In this article, we focus on the role of career shocks in career choice, career development, and career adaptation by exploring interdisciplinary connections with the domains of: (1) job search, (2) human resource management, (3) entrepreneurship, and (4) diver...

A confluence of mega-trends mean that HR is experiencing disruption and change on an unprecedented scale. This special issue is designed to inform our understanding of these shifting landscapes of HRM. In this overview we detail the broad contextual backdrop of key changes, before providing an overview of the six articles that make up this special...

This paper focuses on the increased pressure for corporations to engage in corporate sustainability (CS) and corporate social responsibility (CSR) in order to address the current crisis of confidence in business, align their activities with the needs and expectations of a broader set of stakeholders, and help tackle the world's grand challenges. We...

This study investigates the role of host country nationals’ (HCNs) motivation to offer role information and social support in adjustment experience of self-initiated expatriates (SIEs). We draw on social identity theory and its variant, social categorization theory, to examine the determinants of support provided by HNCs to SEIs through survey data...

https://hbr.org/2018/09/how-companies-can-ensure-maternity-leave-doesnt-hurt-womens-careers

Macro Talent Management: A Global Perspective on Managing Talent in Developed Markets and Macro Talent Management in Emerging and Emergent Markets: A Global Perspective (both are edited by Vlad Vaiman, Paul Sparrow, Randall Shuler, and David G. Collings) serve as a guide that orients the reader toward activities that increase their country’s global...

Research summary This paper emphasises the social and political dimensions of subsidiary influence in strategically repositioning the subsidiary’s mandate. The specific skills subsidiary actors deploy in attempting to influence corporate headquarters have largely been neglected in existing literature. Drawing from a micro‐political perspective, we...

In times of the “Brexit” and “America First” policies, several industrialized countries' governments are turning toward more national-oriented migration policies. Simultaneously, societal aversion to immigration is growing. Both trends are sending negative signals to highly skilled employees and making immigrants feel that they are no longer welcom...

Global staffing has been a key theme in research in IHRM for a number of decades. Our review confirms that it continues to be an important contemporary area of research in IHRM. In the current paper, we review three key contemporary issues in global staffing research, namely, the emergence of global talent management and potentially a more strategi...

The increased research focus on the networked perspective of the multinational enterprise (MNE) reflects a greater delegation of responsibility from corporate headquarters (CHQ) to subsidiary and intermediary units such as regional headquarters (RHQ). This shift has increased the intensity of political interactions between key actors within the MNE...

This paper employs a systematic and comprehensive review to trace the evolution of talent management scholarship and propose a research agenda to move the field forward. Two primary streams of literature dominate: the management of high performers and high potentials, and the identification of strategic positions and talent management systems. The...

This paper employs a systematic and comprehensive review to trace the evolution of talent management scholarship and propose a research agenda to move the field forward. Two primary streams of literature dominate: the management of high performers and high potentials, and the identification of strategic positions and talent management systems. The...

We consider how in issue selling, subsidiaries draw on different forms of legitimacy to attract corporate headquarters’ (CHQ) positive attention and minimise negative CHQ attention. Through case study evidence, we find that directing CHQ attention to subsidiary issues needs to be executed as a balancing act through forms of subsidiary legitimacy, n...

This study advances our understanding of HRM within emerging market multinational enterprises (EM-MNEs) by examining the extent to, and mechanisms by, which Brazilian MNEs standardise or localise their performance management (PM) policies and practices, and the factors that influence their design and implementation. We explored these issues through...

This paper serves as an introduction to this special issue on talent management. The articles featured here are inspired by the second EIASM workshop on talent management. Following a summary review of the current state of the talent management literature the paper introduces the four articles in the issue.

Talent management has become one of the most discussed areas of human resource management practice. However, there is a lack of clarity as to the focus of talent management and its intellectual and conceptual boundaries. This entry presents a summary overview of the area of talent management.

Against the backdrop of globalisation with shifting patterns of foreign direct investment and a rise in global mobility, talent identification, development and deployment, along with the national and organisational systems and structures necessary for its effective engagement, management and retention have become a critical focus for academics and...

In 2006, Lewis and Heckman characterized talent management (TM) as a scientific field in its infancy. Despite a rise in the number of scientific publications on talent management in the subsequent years, talent management has still not completely evolved from its infancy to a more mature stage of development (adolescence). This stagnation in the de...

Responding to calls to incorporate a more dispersed and localized conceptualization of power in the study of strategy as discourse, in this article we illustrate that while investing senior managers with the authority to speak and enact strategy, at one and the same time strategy discourse renders this group highly visible and vulnerable. Using a F...

This chapter reviews the evidence of the impact of talent management on organizational success. Taking a critical stance, the chapter examines the intellectual basis of the posited association between effective talent management and organizational success and proposes some questions that research could usefully address in this important area of con...

Talent management has become one of the most prevalent topics in the field of people management and development for practitioners and academics alike. However, while managers do appear to appreciate the importance of talent management, they often fail to manage it effectively, and the linkages between talent management and organizational performanc...

This study examines the association between the usage of high-performance work systems (HPWS) by subsidiaries of multinational enterprises (MNEs) in Turkey and employee and subsidiary level outcomes. The study is based on a survey of 148 MNE subsidiaries operating in Turkey. The results show that the usage of HPWS has a significant positive impact...

Although global mobility represents an important element of many multinational enterprise’s (MNEs) global talent management systems, the two areas of practice have largely been decoupled in research and practice. The current paper aims to build a dialog around the integration of these two important areas of practice and illustrate how the integrati...

This paper provides a commentary on the article in this special issue by Meyers, van Woerkom, and Dries (2013—this issue) on the meaning of the term ‘talent’ with a particular focus on the extent to which talent is an innate construct (nature), mostly acquired (nurture), or more based on an interaction of the two. While acknowledging Meyers et al.'...

Purpose – Within the current discourse on contemporary careers and the context of international assignments, this paper seeks to conduct a study of a large European MNC, with the aim of theory development on expatriation/repatriation. Design/methodology/approach – A qualitative study, based on semi-structured interviews in a major financial institu...

This paper provides a commentary on the article in this special issue by Meyers, van Woerkom, and Dries on the meaning of the term ‘talent’ with a particular focus on the extent to which talent is an innate construct (nature), mostly acquired (nurture), or more based on an interaction of the two. While acknowledging Meyers et al’s comprehensive and...

This study provides some important insights on identifying the underlying characteristics of HRM practices that are likely to be adapted to the local cultural and institutional milieu by subsidiaries of multinational enterprises (MNEs). Further insights are provided on the distinctive characteristics of HRM practices pursued by local firms that are...

The challenges associated with managing talent on a global scale are greater than those faced by organisations operating on a domestic scale. We believe that the former relate to the fact that a number of key myths regarding talent management may undermine talent management's contribution to multinational corporation effectiveness and retard the de...

The authors use comparable data on employment practices in multinationals located in four countries-Canada, Ireland, Spain, and the United Kingdom-to examine the question, How can we explain variation among national subsidiaries of MNCs in the extent and form of control on employment matters? In accounting for variation in both output and social co...

The nature of born global firms which from inception, seek to derive significant competitive advantage from the use of resources and the sales of outputs in multiple countries remains poorly understood. Given the lack of resources which born globals tend to have compared with larger international competitors the importance of social capital and net...

Purpose The paper sets out to understand the key issues that emerge in the context of decision making. Design/methodology/approach The paper is a literature review. Findings First, the authors review debates around talent management decision making. Second, they examine some of the main factors currently influencing decision making in talent mana...

The literature on multinational corporations (MNCs) has assumed that the parent is generally motivated to transfer practices to subsidiary units that will improve subsidiary efficiency or facilitate comparison of subsidiary performance. Based on this assumption, problems with the transfer process have been understood as related to difficulties in b...

While talent management has gained a central place in the managerial discourse, academic research in the area has lagged behind. This paper considers talent management with a particular focus on the European context and sets the scene for the special issue which it precedes. Given that much of our understanding of talent management is premised on w...

International assignments represent an important form of migration in the global economy. In contrast to most other migrants, international assignees enjoy a relatively privileged position in the labor market. Authored by a diverse team of academics and practitioners, this paper draws on insights from empirical research and unpublished examples fro...

Based on a survey of 340 firms in Turkey, this study examines the link between human resource management (HRM) practices and three organizational outcomes namely employee skills and abilities, employee motivation and organizational financial performance. The study also examines the association between the alignment of HRM practices with the overall...

This paper provides a contextual overview and introduction to this special issue focusing on talent management in the Asia Pacific region. The focus on this region is noteworthy given its continuing importance for global economic growth during a time in which traditional, developed economies have struggled the most with the global financial crisis....

Studying the flows of parent country nationals in multinational enterprises (MNEs) to subsidiary operations has a relatively long tradition. Studying flows of subsidiary employees to other subsidiaries, as third country nationals, and to the corporate headquarters, as inpatriates, however, has empirically much less pedigree. Drawing on a large-scal...

Purpose – This paper seeks to explore the processes and channels through which valuable knowledge from outside the firm reaches those employees who can exploit that knowledge for innovative purposes. It seeks to identify the specific talents exhibited by the key individuals involved in facilitating these important knowledge flows. It also aims to d...

This paper focuses on talent management failure by multinational enterprises (MNEs). It examines barriers to corporate advancement of talents located in subsidiaries and more specifically on promotion of talent already employed by the MNE to be part of the upper echelon management team at its centre. Drawing on agency and bounded rationality theori...

This book draws on recent theoretical contributions in the area of global talent management and presents an up to date and critical review of the key issues which MNEs face. Beyond exploring some key overarching issues in global talent management the book discuses the key emerging issue around global talent management in key economies such as China...