Hugh Scullion

• MA Hons, MA. PhD
• Established Professor of International Management at Ollscoil na Gaillimhe – University of Galway

While research shows that talent management (TM) can be a catalyst of effectiveness for large organisations, few studies explore TM in small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs). Most of these focus on single sectors or utilise large samples that do not fully capture how phenomena vary across industries. Additionally, there is limited focus on TM bu...

Aimed at researchers, postgraduate students, and professionals in the field, Talent Management: A Decade of Developments charts the evolution of talent management, illustrating the progress, prospects, and challenges that have transpired over the last ten years.

While research shows that talent management (TM) practices are linked to individual and organisational outcomes, little is known about the mechanisms through which these processes unfold, especially in the public sector of emerging market economies. This exploratory study investigates TM in the public sector context of Bahrain addressing an importa...

Talent Management (TM) has attracted considerable attention across the globe and the challenges of managing talent effectively and delivering on strategic agendas is increasingly recognized. Yet TM has remained underexplored in emerging markets, particularly, in the public sector context. This research aims to fill the gap by exploring TM in the pu...

Talent Management (TM) has emerged as a key strategic issue for global organizations. Despite the growth of global sports entities, research on TM in this context is scarce. This paper addresses this research gap and investigates major challenges in TM faced by organizations in professional sports business and makes an increasingly significant cont...

There is little doubt that the attraction, development, and retention of talent are nowadays one of the most critical challenges faced by companies worldwide. Despite the increasing scholarly attention during the last years many questions remain, particularly, those related to how (and why) talent management (TM) is conceived, implemented and devel...

This paper addresses a gap in the research on talent retention within the context of cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&A). To answer our key research question: How can psychological contracts be shaped to retain talent in an M&A context? We break down the complexity of M&A by taking a process approach. Using a multiple case study methodology...

Despite the economic importance of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SME's), talent management in this context is under-researched. The liability of smallness and scarce resources as typical features of SMEs require a specific definition and approach to talent management in this sector. The limited knowledge about talent management in SMEs indic...

Talent Management (TM) has become one of the key strategic issues for leaders in global organizations and the majority of research on TM focuses on the large multinational enterprise (MNE) context. Despite the importance of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), research in the area of talent management in this context is scarce, particularly c...

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.

This chapter has a number of objectives: first, to examine the reasons for the growth of interest in talent management (TM) both generally and specifically in the European context; second, to examine different conceptual approaches to TM and to review debates over the meaning of TM; third, to highlight the distinctive European context which influen...

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...

This study seeks to outline activities of training and placement agencies in India aimed at employment of persons with a disability. We contend that persons with a disability are an underutilized human resource and that utilizing their abilities should be a key part of an inclusive approach to talent management. As there is little empirical researc...

This chapter discusses the talent management (TM) challenges in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) in the context of talent development and learning. It focuses on Poland, which in the past few years has become the fastest growing economy in the European Union (EU) and the largest economy in Central Europe. The chapter explains the managerial challen...

With contributions from leading scholars and practitioners, this Cambridge Companion examines the topical issue of talent management from a strategic perspective, mapping out insights from a number of related fields including strategy, organisational learning, marketing and supply chain management. The authors examine the challenges faced when view...

Introduction: why this book?The origins of this book can be traced back to a symposium held in Chicago at the 2009 US Academy of Management on the topic of Global Talent Management: Understanding the Contours of the Field and the Challenges for HRM. A group of academics from the UK, the United States, Ireland, Finland, the Netherlands, and Australi...

With contributions from leading scholars and practitioners, this Cambridge Companion examines the topical issue of talent management from a strategic perspective, mapping out insights from a number of related fields including strategy, organisational learning, marketing and supply chain management. The authors examine the challenges faced when view...

This paper examines the importance of employee-centred Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) considerations in exploring CSR's effect on employee work motivation. It is our contention that beyond CSR's link to external factors (e.g. PR, philanthropy, environment and NGOs) predominantly discussed in theory and practice of contemporary business, we s...

This study presents an empirical exploration of a theory-driven framework of corporate human resource (CHR) roles in global talent management (GTM). Specifically, it expands our knowledge of the process of GTM in two sectors: financial and professional services. On the basis of the in-depth interview data from two firms, the study finds evidence of...

Although the literature on talent management (TM) has grown considerably in the last decade, with the bulk of previous research concentrating on large MNCs, there has been little development on how it applies to small- and medium-sized enterprises and particularly to medium-sized organisations (MSOs), nor to many countries outside Anglo-Saxon manag...

This study seeks to make a contribution to our conceptual and empirical understanding into the nature of talent management (TM) in German small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), an under-researched area in the field. The approach of this investigation recognizes that TM may vary significantly between different types of companies and national con...

Drawing from the talent management and global mobility literatures, there is simultaneous pressure to address both organizational goals to place talent internationally, and individual goals of self-initiated expatriation. This raises important questions for the future of global talent management (GTM): how might individual and organizational goals...

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 presenc...

With contributions from leading scholars and practitioners, this Cambridge Companion examines the topical issue of talent management from a strategic perspective, mapping out insights from a number of related fields including strategy, organisational learning, marketing and supply chain management. The authors examine the challenges faced when view...

Introduction: key learning points from the book. We complete this book by reviewing some of its key learning points, and summarizing the implications of these for the future development of practice and research. Chapter 1 provided a brief historical review of how the field emerged and developed and showed that while the field of strategic talent ma...

In this age of globalization, organizations are placing greater emphasis on attracting, developing, and retaining an international workforce that can operate effectively in a hyper-competitive global marketplace. Traditionally the concept of an international workforce has been associated with the use of long-term expatriate assignments, in other wo...

There is a dearth of empirical studies on talent management (TM) in the emerging markets, and in particular a lack of research on TM in the countries of the Central and Eastern European (CEE) region. Our empirical study in 58 organisations in Poland, a major economy in the CEE region, is one of the first studies to examine TM in this context. Our s...

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 ‘individual’ forms of industrial conflict, such as absenteeism, have received little attention in industrial sociology. This paper attempts to correct this deficiency by attacking the conventional approach to these phenomena and by using recent research findings to develop a sociological alternative. The main characteristics of the conventional...

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...

The link between Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Global Talent Management (GTM) is conspicuously absent from existing research on CSR. Our comparative study of CSR and GTM in the UK and Korea is one of the few empirical studies to examine the link between CSR and GTM strategy and how this relationship may vary in different national contex...

This paper proposes a theoretical framework for developing expatriate managers’ local competence in emerging markets from a knowledge-based perspective. We argue that local knowledge in emerging markets differs significantly from corporate knowledge transferred to those markets, and that its very nature determines its critical importance to expatri...

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...

We currently know little of the role of the corporate human resource (HR) function in multinational corporations regarding global talent management (GTM). GTM is explored here from two perspectives: increasing global competition for talent, and new forms of international mobility. The first considers the mechanisms of GTM, and the second, individua...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine whether traditional conventions of the expatriate psychological contract have altered from both employer and employee perspectives. In essence to what extent have multi‐national corporations adjusted organisational practices to reflect changing circumstances and to what extent have expatriates altered...

This paper provides the context for the current special issue on global staffing and provides an up to date review of the state of the art in the literature in the area. We explore the key role played by global staffing in strategic international human resource management, with a particular focus on innovation, organisational learning and corporate...

This paper explores the role of mentoring and networking in the career development of global female managers. The paper is based on data collected from interviews with 50 senior female managers. The voices of the female managers illustrate some of the difficulties associated with informal organisational processes, in particular mentoring and networ...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the self‐initiated repatriation experience of native professionals as they return to the labour market in the Republic of Ireland of their own volition and without the support of an employer. Design/methodology/approach A mixed methodology was employed to gather the data. In total, 40 responses were...

This article introduces the special issue of Human Resource Management Journal on International Human Resource Management in the 21st Century. We begin by considering some of the key aspects of the changing landscape of international business and the key emergent issues for IHRM at the beginning of the 21st century. Key themes which we consider inc...

We argue that many MNCs continue to underestimate the complexities involved in global staffing and that organisations and academics must take a more strategic view of staffing arrangements in an international context. We suggest that the context for the management and handling of the international assignment has altered significantly, leading in so...

Hugh Scullion is Senior Lecturer and Director of the MA in Human Resource Management at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. His article presents the findings from a recent study of the management of managers in international firms. Essentially, the article focuses on the problems faced by these firms in the recruitment and staffing of their over...

This article examines the micro-level operational difficulties for multinational corporations (MNCs) to generate value from its highly geographically dispersed cross-border knowledge and studies the strategies for overcoming them. Using China as the research context, we identify key geographical, institutional and cultural features of cross-border...

Staffing is one of the biggest issues facing companies moving into the global market today. This book provides a multi-disciplinary, integrated and critical discussion-based analysis of current and emerging issues in global staffing. It critically examines best practice and leading approaches, drawing on research from a range of disciplines includi...